Counterchanged

In heraldry, part of a device is counterchanged if the colours for the background and the charges in one section are swapped in another section.

An example is the device of the Kingdom of Meridies which is blazoned as:

Argent, on a pale sable a crown of three points, above each point a mullet argent, overall a laurel wreath counterchanged.

This means that the device has a vertical bar in its center and a laurel wreath covering all of the device. The bar is coloured sable and the part of the wreath that covers the bar is coloured argent. Elsewhere in the device, the wreath is counterchanged, meaning the wreath is sable and the background is argent. The crown and mullets are only in the center section so they do not counterchange and are always argent.

If clothing is counterchanged, then it is parti-colored.