INSTEAD

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does instead mean? 

• INSTEAD (adverb)
  The adverb INSTEAD has 2 senses:

1. in place of, or as an alternative to

2. on the contrary

  Familiarity information: INSTEAD used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INSTEAD (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In place of, or as an alternative to

Synonyms:

alternatively; instead; or else

Context example:

alternatively we could buy a used car

Sense 2

Meaning:

On the contrary

Synonyms:

instead; rather

Context example:

used English terms instead of Latin ones

 Context examples 

A second group of 92 malnourished children, also under standard treatment but placed on placebos instead of vitamin D3 supplements, showed far less improvement than the first group

(Vitamin D3 boost helps treat child malnutrition, SciDev.Net)

"Bless the child! She's gone and put 'Mother' on them instead of 'M. March'. How funny!" cried Jo, taking one up.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Specifically, it would be a cryovolcano — a volcano that erupts a liquid made of volatiles such as water, instead of silicates.

(Ceres' Geological Activity, Ice Revealed in New Research, NASA)

I thought it was the end of us, but instead of that it started them on a new line.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Instead, they play a direct role in immunity, gene regulation and other biological mechanisms.

(Discovery of RNA transfer through royal jelly could aid development of honey bee vaccines, University of Cambridge)

I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Instead of returning to the king, however, he conducted his troop by byways back to the forest, and called forth Iron Hans.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Other microbes, dependent on nitrates, came to dominate the plume instead.

(Scientists report skyrocketing phyotplankton population in aftermath of Kīlauea eruption, Wikinews)

A progressive, chronic disease in which the bone marrow is replaced by fibrous tissue and blood is made in organs such as the liver and the spleen, instead of in the bone marrow.

(Agnogenic myeloid metaplasia, NCI Dictionary)

I use the verb 'to torment,' as I observed to be your own method, instead of 'to instruct,' supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)