Verb

(en verb)

To change the form or structure of.

* Bible, Psalms lxxxix. 34

My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

* Shakespeare

No power in Venice can alter a decree.

* Alexander Pope

It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

To become different.

To tailor clothes to make them fit.

To castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal).

(obsolete) To agitate; to affect mentally.

(Milton)

Verb

(en verb)

To modify.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A new prescription , passage=As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}

To improve or rectify.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

To settle an insurance claim.

To change to fit circumstances.