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I have an apple and he has an orange. I want his orange and he wants my apple.

And we say "I swapped my Apple for his orange".

However, now an Apple and an orange, which belong to no one, are on the table and I want to put the Apple into the position of the orange and put the orange into the position of the apple.

Can I say "I swapped the Apple and the orange"?

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  • Technically-minded people will sometimes say I transposed the apple and orange. Especially in contexts like programming, where transpose [the values of] X and Y means swap their values (set X to the original value of Y, and set Y to the original value of X).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 6 at 14:19

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Yes, you certainly can. To be even clearer, you might write

I swapped the positions of the apple and the orange.

or something similar.

"Interchange" is another word that you could use, as well as some other terms that you can find with a thesaurus. "Swap" is very common, though.

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A formal word we can use to describe making two things exchange positions is a verb: 'transpose'. If my phone number is 123 45678 and I tell you it is 123 45768, I have transposed the 6 and the 7.

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  • Note that this term, while very precise and accurate, will not be recognized widely outside technical communities - it borders on jargon.
    – Ryan Jensen
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 20:55
  • @RyanJensen - I and colleagues use it routinely in work relating to e.g. accounting errors, their causes and their avoidance. I don't agree that it is 'jargon', but I'd agree that it is 'educated'. It is always good to have a formal word available as well as a relaxed one.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 21:58
  • My experience is that educated people in fields where the concept is not regularly discussed do not generally know the term - but it's possible that's just an effect of my particular sample. I use 'transpose', having picked up the term in computer science, but often get blank stares when I use it, even with educated audiences. That's not to say it isn't a useful word to have, but especially for a language learner it's good to know when your terminology might be outside people's vocabulary.
    – Ryan Jensen
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 22:16

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