alternate with (something)

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alternate with (something)

To appear repetitively with something else. That pattern is visually overwhelming; it's just a constant line of circles alternating with squares. I think it would look better if we alternated these gray tiles with the blue ones. No, don't alternate a bold shape and color like that with an equally bold shape and color.
See also: alternate
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

alternate with something

 
1. [for someone] to serve as a substitute for someone. I alternated with Fred as the lead in the school play. They asked Harry to alternate with Ron on the team.
2. [for something] to appear repetitively and regularly in a sequence with something else. (For instance, A alternates with B in the sequence ABABAB.) In this design the straight lines alternate with the circles. The red dots alternate with the blue ones.
See also: alternate
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in classic literature ?
To the student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry.
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This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in my present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest despair.
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He uttered little crooning noises, alternating with sharp cries akin to pain, half-ecstatic, half-petulant, as he drew a black clay pipe from a hole in his ear-lobe, and into the bowl of it, with trembling fingers, untwisted and crumbled the cheap leaf of spoiled Virginia crop.
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The lower beds of the Peuquenes ridge, and of the several great lines to the westward of it, are composed of a vast pile, many thousand feet in thickness, of porphyries which have flowed as submarine lavas, alternating with angular and rounded fragments of the same rocks, thrown out of the submarine craters.
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Telophaza thrillingly exemplified Batsheva's large-scale works--precise, rhythmic group actions alternating with intimate scenes; varied, entertaining music; juicy passages of Naharin's distinctive idiom; and of course his fantastic dancers.
Lincoln Center Festival
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