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alternator

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,520 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: alternators

An alternator is the part that charges the battery while the engine runs. A failed alternator, replace the alternator, the alternator belt.

It is driven by a belt off the engine and makes alternating current, which is then converted for the battery. When one fails the car runs on the battery alone and stops within an hour or so.

Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii · Public domain

Definitions of alternator

  1. 1nounalternatorThe part that charges the battery while the engine runs.C1

    “The car battery kept going flat because the alternator was broken.”

alternator is a part.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₂el- (other)

  2. Latin

    alternātus

  3. English

    alternate

  4. English, today

    alternator

Built from

  • alternus · Latin — one after another, by turns
  • alter · Latin — other

From alternate + -or. alternate Latin alternātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin alternō (“to take turns”) (see -ate), from alternus (“one after another, by turns”), from alter (“other”) + -nus. a doublet of altern; see also alter.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Vehicles & Machines

Practise this word

alternator in the wild

  • For reasons of cost and simplicity, most alternators use a rotating magnetic field with a stationary armature.

    Alternator

  • Occasionally, a linear alternator or a rotating armature with a stationary magnetic field is used.

    Alternator

  • An Alexanderson alternator is a rotating machine, developed by Ernst Alexanderson beginning in 1904, for the generation of high-frequency alternating current for use as a radio transmitter.

    Alexanderson alternator

  • Although superseded in the early 1920s by the development of vacuum-tube transmitters, the Alexanderson alternator continued to be used until World War II.

    Alexanderson alternator

  • Today, the simpler and more reliable alternator dominates large scale power generation, for efficiency, reliability and cost reasons.

    Dynamo

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the alter family

alteralternate

alternator — used about once every 9,395 pages · #11,520 · point at the bar for the others

  • alternative