alternative

alternative
adjective

noun

语源

mid 16th cent. (in the sense 'alternating, alternate'): from French alternatif, -ive or medieval Latin alternativus, from Latin alternare 'interchange' (see alternate)

用法

1 The adjective alternate is sometimes used in place of alternative, especially in American English. Strictly speaking, the two words are quite distinct: alternative means ‘available as another possibility or choice’, as in some European countries follow an alternative approach while alternate means ‘every other or every second’, as in they meet on alternate Sundays or ‘(of two things) each following and succeeded by the other in a regular pattern’, as in alternate layers of potato and sauce The use of alternate to mean alternative, as in we will need to find alternate sources of fuel is common in North America, and many dictionaries now record the two simply as variants of one another. The Oxford Reading Programme records a quarter of all uses in this sense using the spelling alternate. It is, however, still regarded as incorrect by many people in Britain.
2 Some traditionalists maintain, from an etymological standpoint, that you can only have a maximum of two alternatives (from the Latin alter ‘other (of two)’) and that uses where there are more than two alternatives are erroneous. Such uses are, however, normal in modern standard English

热门查询

考试词汇表