Search the Dictionary

An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.

peculiar gait of a horse, in which both legs on the same side are moved at the same time, alternating with the legs on the other side. "A fine easy amble." B. Jonson.

In public bodies; Any alternation made or proposed to be made in a bill or motion by adding, changing, substituting, or omitting.

R.] Notions of popular rights and the amissibility of sovereign power for misconduct were alternately broached by the two great religious parties of Europe. Hallam.

A poem in which persons are represented at speaking alternately; as the third and seventh eclogues of Virgil.

Alternately answering.

n 90º. -- Adjacent or Contiguous angles, such as have one leg common to both angles. -- Alternate angles. See Alternate. -- Angle bar. (a) (Carp.) An upright bar at the angle where two faces of a polygonal or bay window meet. Knight. (b) (Mach.) Same as Angle iron. -- Angle bead (Arch.), a bead worked on or fixed t…

Formerly, a hymn sung in alternate parts, in present usage, a selection from the Psalms, or other parts of the Scriptures or the liturgy, set to sacred music.

Alternately. [Obs.] Bacon.

A musical response; alternate singing or chanting. See Antiphony, and Antiphone.

Of or pertaining to antiphony, or alternate singing; sung alternately by a divided choir or opposite choirs. Wheatly. -- An*tiph"o*nal*ly, adv.

The response which one side of the choir makes to the other in a chant; alternate chanting or signing.

An anthem or psalm sung alternately by a choir or congregation divided into two parts. Also figuratively. O! never more for me shall winds intone, With all your tops, a vast antiphony. R. Browning.

the dots in their lateral surfaces in two or three rows, and the dots of contiguous rows alternating. The seeds are edible.

dog. [Eng.] To back and fill, to manage the sails of a ship so that the wind strikes them alternately in front and behind, in order to keep the ship in the middle of a river or channel while the current or tide carries the vessel against the wind. Hence: (Fig.) To take opposite positions alternately; to assert and deny…

Any one of the four bounds which mark the circuit of the infield. Altern base. See under Altern. -- Attic base. (Arch.) See under Attic. -- Base course. (Arch.) (a) The first or lower course of a foundation wall, made of large stones of a mass of concrete; -- called also foundation course. (b) The architectural membe…

pl. The whole parapet, consisting of alternate solids and open spaces. At first purely a military feature, afterwards copied on a smaller scale with decorative features, as for churches.

To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and less intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; -- said of instruments, tones, or vibrations, not perfectly in unison. A beating wind (Naut.), a wind which necessitates tacking in order to make progress. -- To beat about, to try to find; to search by va…

An instrument, utensil, or machine, which, by alternate expansion and contraction, or by rise and fall of the top, draws in air through a valve and expels it through a tube for various purposes, as blowing fires, ventilating mines, or filling the pipes of an organ with wind. Bellows camera, in photography, a form of ca…

A chain in which the alternate links are broad blocks connected by thin side links pivoted to the ends of the blocks, used with sprocket wheels to transmit power, as in a bicycle.