Past tense of alternate
regular verb
The past tense of alternate is alternated. The past participle is also alternated.
Forms of alternate
| Base form (V1) | alternate /ɒlˈtɜː(ɹ).nət/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | alternated |
| Past participle (V3) | alternated |
| Present participle | alternating |
| Third person singular | alternates |
Alternated in a sentence
- This case suggests that the alternation of a polyhedron should be bounded by actual vertex figures and alternated faces.1932, Harold Scott Macdonald Coxeter, The densities of the regular polytopes, part 2, reprinted in 1995, F. Arthur Sherk, Peter Mcmullen...
- In the postcolonial period, democracy alternated with military rule.From the entry postcolonial
- These states alternated with fits of emotional mobility and suspicional tenderness.1921, The American Journal of Clinical Medicine, volume 28, page 757. From the entry suspicional
- His punches alternated between uppercuts and loose-handed swipes.2011, Penelope Fletcher, Demon Day. From the entry loose-handed
- She alternated slow mornas with slightly faster songs that touched on other Cape Verdean rhythms like funaná and coladeira.2007 June 28, Jon Pareles, “A Calm, Serene Presence From Islands of Nostalgia”, in New York Times. From the entry coladeira
Meaning of alternate
- adjective Happening by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
- adjective Alternating; (of e.g. a pair of tinctures which a charge is coloured) succeeding in turns, or (relative to the field) counterchanged.
- adjective Designating the members in a series, which regularly intervene between the members of another series, as the odd or even numbers of the numerals; every other; every second.
Questions about the past tense of alternate
- What is the past tense of alternate?
- The past tense of alternate is alternated.
- What is the past participle of alternate?
- The past participle of alternate is alternated.
- Is alternate a regular or irregular verb?
- Alternate is a regular verb: its past tense adds -d.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alternate (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of alternate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/alternate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.