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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.

g. [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.…

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.

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…

f science bi- in composition denotes two, twice, or doubly; as, bidentate, two-toothed; biternate, doubly ternate, etc.

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.

stretchers; Flemish bond (Fig.2), where each course consists of headers and stretchers alternately, so laid as always to break joints; Cross bond, which differs from the English by the change of the second stretcher line so that its joints come in the middle of the first, and the same position of stretchers comes back…

An ancient mode of writing, in alternate directions, one line from left to right, and the next from right to left (as fields are plowed), as in early Greek and Hittite.

A projecting part of a wheel or other moving piece so shaped as to give alternate or variable motion to another piece against which its acts.

ns are attended with the formation of an intermediate compound or compounds, so that by alternate composition and decomposition the agent is apparenty left unchanged; as, the catalysis of making ether from alcohol by means of sulphuric acid; or catalysis in the action of soluble ferments (as diastase, or ptyalin) on st…

A board with sixty-four squares of alternate color, used for playing checkers or draughts.

Marked with alternate squares or checks of different color or material. Dancing in the checkered shade. Milton.

Work consisting of or showing checkers varied alternately as to colors or materials.

Anything made so as to form alternate squares lke those of a checkerboard.

The board used in the game of chess, having eight rows of alternate light and dark squares, eight in each row. See Checkerboard.