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verb

alter

CEFR B2

cause to change; make different; cause a transformation

In a sentence

Six example sentences with alter, each labelled with its topic.

  • Swapping butter for oil will alter the crumb of a cake so much that regular eaters notice at once.

    Cooking

  • One skylight altered the room completely: the same walls that felt like a basement now read as a study.

    Architecture

  • Removing one predator altered the whole valley, until the streams themselves ran along different courses within twenty years.

    Environment

  • A single night of poor sleep can alter how we judge a stranger's face, tilting neutral toward hostile.

    Psychology

  • A quarter-point rate rise altered the math on every mortgage in the country overnight.

    Finance

  • Dropping the tempo by ten beats altered the song so much that the band recorded it again as a ballad.

    Music

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Found in these word lists

Found in 7 published word listsAuthoritative

Each source is a published word list that contains alter. No exam board publishes an official GRE, GMAT or SAT list; GMAT words come from GRE lists and the Academic Word List.