ersatz
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *ud-s-?
Proto-Indo-European *h₂u-s-?
Proto-Germanic *uz-
Proto-West Germanic *uʀ-
Proto-Indo-European *sed-
Proto-Indo-European *-yeti
Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti
Proto-Indo-European *sodéyeti
Proto-Germanic *satjaną
Proto-West Germanic *sattjan
Proto-West Germanic *uʀsattjan
Old High German irsezzen
Middle High German ersetzen
German ersetzenbf.
German Ersatzbor.
English ersatz
Borrowed from German Ersatz (“replacement, substitute”), a back-formation from ersetzen (“to replace, to substitute”).
Inflected forms:
form: more ersatz
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most ersatz
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: ersatzes
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: An inauthentic or inadequate substitute or imitation.
pos: adj
examples: Back then, we could only get ersatz coffee.
In these days of “rolled” gold, electro-plate, and undetectable pearls, it is curious that almost the only honest Ersatz material known to the goldsmith's art should be utterly forgotten.
Ersatzgas, Ersatzpfennige. Ersatz has become a brave word in Germany. As a substantive it means War Reparations. As part of compounded words it means substitute.
“There we are, you see! No discipline, no backbone! Have you by any chance any discipline, sir? Have you any character? Everything is fake. Everything is ersatz [translating German Ersatz]—vulgarity is everywhere I look.”
They forge documents indicating that Winston Churchill plotted World War I; they manufacture an ersatz fossil suggesting that humans have been around as long as apes; they create a pseudo-Gospel supposedly written by Paul in which he claims that Jesus never performed miracles..
The avant-garde's opposite number, in Greenberg's scheme, is kitsch, "ersatz culture"—art for capitalism's new man (who turns out to be no different from Fascism's or Communism's new man).
The NATO visitors watched an ersatz eighteenth-century dance (complete with powdered wigs and simulated copulation) that might have been considered obscene had it not been so amusing.
The crowd wandered out to a huge party on the ersatz city blocks of the Paramount lot.
If all goes according to plan, the ersatz city hall will soon be relocated to a former lumber warehouse in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, at which point construction on the rest of Town Square will start.
gloss: Something made in imitation; an effigy or substitute.
pos: noun
examples: The important point I want to emphasize here is that, regardless of a Government agency's conception of what a consumer expects of a food item, by and large the consumer detests the use of chemicals in foods as substitutes for nutritious, wholesome natural ingredients which improve flavor and quality. The consumer has little to gain in purchasing a product containing questionable ersatzes if his life is to be endangered or he will suffer ill effects.
What intrigues us is what will happen when the ersatzes for the ersatzes come along. Will characters start substituting for actors, bona fide dogs for barking ladies; will people start looking at people again instead of television and at nature instead of at documentaries?
They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.
“You do Berlin a disservice, baron. We too have mastered a few things: ersatzes, for instance, and the metaphysics of fictionalism—”
Translations: