ersatzn.

1875 Encycl. Brit. II. 594/2 (German army), Those who are exempted..are passed into the Ersatz reserve.

1892 J. Royce Let. 17 Oct. in R. B. Perry Thought & Char. W. James (1935) I. 803 To me he is a great comfort, although..no Ersatz for the aforesaid condition of my heart.

1910 Pedagogical Seminary 305 When names are forgotten owing to such a disturbance, an Ersatz name appears.

1919 Athenæum 1 Aug. 695/1 Another word not seldom met with is ‘ersatz’. It is the German ‘substitute’.

1927 Daily Express 30 Sept. 1/1 It will merely be an imitation Parliament, an ‘Ersatz’ Parliament, designed to fulfil the immediate needs of the Dictatorship.

1928 T. S. Eliot For Lancelot Andrewes 89 Of course Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells are also much occupied with religion and Ersatz-Religion.

1930 Observer 9 Mar. 12 The coffee..will be..tempered with a judicious mixture of ‘ersatz’.

1938 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 42 919 The problem of ‘Ersatz’ materials is well considered and modern aeronautical materials (like plastics, compressed wood, resin glues, etc.) are described.

1939 Punch 22 Nov. p. vii/2 (advt.) A real tobacco. There is no Ersatz in Four Square.

1940 Nature 13 Jan. 60/1 Present-day brands of margarine cannot be considered in any way Ersatz butter.

1942 L. B. Namier Conflicts 58 This set a high premium on Hitler's jack-boots and ersatz uniforms.

1944 E. H. W. Meyerstein Let. 24 Nov. (1959) 297 He [sc. Swinburne] went now and then to places where women beat him, which must have been a wretched ersatz for the sort of thing he wanted, e.g. to be flogged by the Duke of Wellington.

1949 F. Maclean Eastern Approaches iii. v. 362 A breakfast of black bread and captured ersatz coffee made from roasted grain.

1950 Mind 59 20 Propositions regarded as ersatz facts or quasi-things.

1952 H. Read Philos. Mod. Art i. iii. 69 All we can create in that way is an ersatz culture, the synthetic product of those factories we call variously universities, colleges or museums.

1956 C. Wilson Outsider v. 133 Kant, with his ersatz morality, is a special target.