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Evidence of ersatz in English dates to the middle of the 19th century, but the word didn’t come into prominence until World War I. Borrowed from German, where Ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective to modify terms like coffee (made from acorns) and flour (made from potatoes)—ersatz products necessitated by the privations of war. By the time World War II came around, bringing with it a resurgence of ersatz products, ersatz was wholly entrenched in the language. Today, ersatz describes any substitute or imitation, especially when it’s inferior to the original.
Examples of ersatz in a Sentence
T. M. Brown, New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2025
James Provost Choosing the proper enclosure for my ersatz test instrument was one of the bigger challenges.
—David Schneider, IEEE Spectrum, 30 Aug. 2025
British puppeteer Rod Hull arrives on set with his ersatz bird that promptly snaps at Carson while playing nice with Richard Pryor on the Tonight Show couch.
—Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 7 Aug. 2025
And poor, engine‑damaging quality or not, the ersatz aviation fuel had to work only once to get a kamikaze plane up and away to hit one of the enemy warships now lazing about in the offing around the Home Islands, often close enough to be spotted from shore with the naked eye.
—Literary Hub, 7 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for ersatz
Cite this Entry
“Ersatz.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ersatz. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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