ALTERNATELY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does alternately mean? 

• ALTERNATELY (adverb)
  The adverb ALTERNATELY has 1 sense:

1. in an alternating sequence or position

  Familiarity information: ALTERNATELY used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ALTERNATELY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In an alternating sequence or position

Context example:

he planted fir and pine trees alternately

Pertainym:

alternate (occurring by turns; first one and then the other)

 Context examples 

Don’t you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little?

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and swayed him.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She was in a fever of tingling mystery, alternately frightened and charmed, and in constant bewilderment.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

We need to carry on cooking chicken well and never to alternately handle raw meat and salad.

(Wash your hands or else spread superbug E. coli, say scientists, Wikinews)

They had a flat space before them, on which they alternately threw little square pieces of bone, and were so intent upon their occupation that they never raised eye as he approached them.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Histone acetylation and deacetylation alternately exposes and occludes DNA to transcription factors.

(Histone deacetylase, NCI Thesaurus/from OMIM)

Diana and Mary Rivers are both married: alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see them.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“Well,” returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart, and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction, as he looked alternately at us and at the fire.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

William was her pride; Betsey her darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)