Word.ws English Dictionary

alterous

UK/ˈɒltəɹəs//ˈɔltɚəs/

alterous adjective: pertaining to or characterized by alterity (otherness, the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed); other.

Adjective

alterous (not comparable)

  1. Pertaining to or characterized by alterity (otherness, the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed); other.
    • The appeal from things is an appeal to abandon oneself to things, to give oneself to alterous relations, and therefore to make of oneself a gift, […] How to celebrate things in their alterity becomes the ethical question waiting for an answer.2000, Silvia Benso, The Face of Things: A Different Side of Ethics, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 158
    • […] capacities as lines whose inflexions sediment inexhaustible ways of flexing to these encounters with the world. They do so by bending their initial and present sedimented complex of senses to alterity or to what is alterous in the environment.2012, S.B. Mallin, Art Line Thought, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 249
  2. Pertaining to or characterized by an attraction to someone which is intermediate between platonic and romantic.
    • These attractions might include, but are not limited to: sexual, romantic, platonic, aesthetic, and alterous attractions.2016, Ashley Mardell, The ABC's of LGBT+, Mango Media Inc., →ISBN
    • These include: the (nonsexual, nonromantic) aesthetic attraction, platonic attraction, sensual attraction and alterous attraction. Together, these complexify the field of attraction per se to the point that the heterosexual matrix becomes […]2018, Rob Cover, Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Genders and Relationships in a Digital Era, Routledge, →ISBN

Origin of alterous

From or related to alter(ity) + -ous.

Questions about alterous

What does alterous mean?
Alterous means pertaining to or characterized by alterity (otherness, the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed); other.
What part of speech is alterous?
Alterous is an adjective.
How do you pronounce alterous?
Alterous is pronounced /ˈɒltəɹəs/ (UK).

Words near alterous in the dictionary

  1. alterobactin
  2. alterobactins
  3. alterocentric
  4. alteromonad
  5. alteromonads
  6. alterous
  7. alterred
  8. alterring
  9. alters
  10. alters or changes
  11. altersex

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alterous (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-alterous.wav.

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