Search the Dictionary

Admitting of exchange or mutual substitution. "Interchangeable warrants." Bacon.

The quality of being commutable; interchangeableness.

Relative to exchange; interchangeable; reciprocal. -- Com*mut"a*tive"ly, adv. Rich traders, from their success, are presumed . . . to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice. Burke.

Capable of being exchanged or interchanged; reciprocal; interchangeable. So long as we are in the regions of nature, miraculous and improbable, miraculous and incredible, may be allowed to remain convertible terms. Trench.

as from a near object; -- so called because the positions of the object and its image are interchangeable. -- Focus tube (Phys.), a vacuum tube for Roentgen rays in which the cathode rays are focused upon the anticathode, for intensifying the effect. -- Principal, or Solar, focus (Opt.), the focus for parallel rays.…

t. In its different applications, it approaches some of the meanings of, and sometimes is interchangeable with, within, into, on, at, of, and among. It is used: --

The state or quality of being interchangeable; interchangeableness.

Mutually interchangeable. These two rules will render a definition reciprocal with the thing defined. I. Watts.

relation of metameric substances, or their respective derivatives, which are more or less interchangeable, according as one form or the other is the more stable. It is a special case of metamerism; thus, the lactam and the lactim compounds exhibit tautomerism.

On; -- used in all the senses of that word, with which it is interchangeable. "Upon an hill of flowers." Chaucer. Our host upon his stirrups stood anon. Chaucer. Thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar. Ex. xxix. 21. The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. Judg. xvi. 9. As I did stand my watch upon the hill.…