Other forms: changed, changes, changing
Change is one thing becoming another. You change your shirt, you change trains at the next stop, you change your mind halfway down the path and turn back.
As a noun it splits in two. A change is an alteration — a change to the timetable, a change of plan, a change of heart — and change is also the coins the cashier counts back into your hand when you pay with a note. That second one takes no plural and no article: you ask for change for a ten, never for a change for a ten. The verb likes into and from … to: she changed into dry clothes, the lights changed from green to red. The word runs through the fixed phrases as well — change hands, change your tune, a change of scene.
1verbchangeTo become different, or to make something different.~13%
“The weather changed while we were inside.”
2verbreplaceTo replace one thing with another, or move from one to another.~4%
“We change trains at the border.”
3nounalterationAn alteration — something that is now different from how it was.~81%
“There has been a change to the timetable.”
synonyms: alteration, shift
4nounmoneyThe money handed back when you pay more than a thing costs; loose coins.~2%
“The driver gave me my change in coins.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 140 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin cambiāre meant to barter — to swap one thing for another — and it was built on cambium, change. Behind that stands a Celtic word for twisted or crooked: a thing that has changed has been bent out of the shape it was in. Spanish cambiar and Italian cambiare are the same word still at work, and so is English exchange.
Middle English
chaungen
English, today
change
Built from
From Middle English chaungen. From Middle English changen, chaungen, from Old French changier, from Latin cambiāre, from Latin cambio (“to exchange, barter”), derived from the noun cambium (“change”) (whence was loaned the English a doublet of cambium), from cel-gau cambion, earlier kambyom (“change”), related to Proto-Celtic kambos (“twisted, crooked”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European (s)ḱh₂(e)mbos, (s)kh₂(e)mbos (“crooked”). More at skimp, scam; see also kh₂em-. Cognate with Italian cambiare, Portuguese cambiar, Romanian schimba, Sicilian canciari, Spanish cambiar. Used in English since the 13th century. wenden, from wendan (“to turn, change”) (whence wend).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA