ersatz
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈɜrˌzæts/
- Formal
:
imitación
- And because it is the conservative version, it will therefore be more valid than valid and more real than real, and the ersatz is actually the genuine article.
Examples
-
He had spent the first nine years of his career at a middle school where he felt he was teaching "ersatz" social studies.
Academic text (1994) -
Human rights is, in this sense, an ersatz of sorts for the divine.
Academic text (1992) -
As recently as World War I, nettle cloth was a major ersatz in Germany.
Academic text (1992) -
So, 8 ersatz corps would require 192 ersatz batteries, not 96.
Academic text (2010) -
Even raising 86 ersatz battalions strained German resources to the limit.
Academic text (2010) -
This essay proposes that thinking about historical artifacts in the late medieval and early modern period, and even the production of images and buildings, was built on the following paradox: the possibility that a material sample of the past could somehow be both an especially powerful testimony to a distant world and, at the same time, very likely an ersatz for some earlier, now absent artifact.
Academic text (2005) -
The restaurant served ersatz bread that was a poor imitation of the real thing.
-
He could easily tell the difference between the genuine product and the ersatz version.
-
During shortages, people often resorted to ersatz materials to replace the items they normally used.
Synonyms
2
7.8
A cheaper copy of a designer or brand-name item
Made to look like something real but not the original
A person or thing placed to take another person's place
How Authentic
Surface Forms
Etymology
The word ersatz as a noun comes from the German Ersatz meaning 'replacement' and was used for substitute goods during wartime shortages. So an ersatz is an artificial or second-rate substitute for the real thing.