the act of substituting one thing for another; substitution; exchange.

the changing of a prison sentence or other penalty to another less severe.

the act of commuting, as to and from a place of work.

the substitution of one kind of payment for another.

Electricity . the act or process of commutating.

Also called commutation test. Linguistics . the technique, esp. in phonological analysis, of substituting one linguistic item for another while keeping the surrounding elements constant, used as a means of determining the constituent units in a sequence and their contrasts with other units.

noun

replacement , compensation , exchange , interchange , shift , substitution , switch , trade , transposition