alternatives
- 1Plural of alternative.
The committee weighed three alternatives before settling on a plan.
Solar and wind power are increasingly viable alternatives to fossil fuels.
Note
The plural belongs only to the countable uses of alternative: the mutually exclusive options set against one another, or the acceptable words offered in place of offensive ones. The music genre, alternative rock, is uncountable and takes no plural, and the adjective never inflects, so alternatives is always a noun. Because each option rules out the others, the plural sits naturally with verbs of choosing, such as weigh, consider and rule out.
alternatives is a form of alternative
alternative, noun: One of two or more possibilities that can be chosen instead of another, including the one left when others are ruled out. Full entry
- Forms
- alternativealternatives plural
- Spelling
- alternative → alternatives: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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