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Definition
an artificial or inferior substitute or imitation- They held an ersatz press conference that was impressive to the untrained eye.
ersatz = inferior substitute or imitation
- The restaurant serves Americanized ersatz Italian cuisine.
- We need good alternatives to fossil fuels, not the ersatz variety in which we convert corn to ethanol and then face soaring food prices.Time Magazine, 2008 -- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810308,00.html (retrieved 09/17/09)
- The ersatz butter sold to be more healthy than butter ended up being proved to be less healthy when we better understood trans fats.
- If there's anything TV has taught us, after all, it's that nothing is as ordinary as weird families, or as weird as ordinary ones. TV is all about families, real and ersatz, on islands and gridirons, in pitch meetings and interrogations. After a long hiatus, it's good to have the family back.Time Magazine, 2009 -- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1871908-3,00.html (retrieved 09/17/09)
- Breakfast consists of plain, unbuttered bread and ersatz coffee.Anne Frank -- The Diary of a Young Girl
- Everyone's hungry; except for the ersatz coffee, a week's food ration doesn't last two days.Anne Frank -- The Diary of a Young Girl
- The blind innkeeper said that the Americans could sleep in his stable that night, and he gave them soup and ersatz coffee and a little beer.Kurt Vonnegut -- Slaughterhouse-Five
- The nurses threw him another party, the ersatz bourbon went down easy, and there was a moonlit jeep ride with a pretty girl.Laura Hillenbrand -- Unbroken
- They wore different clothes: oversized ersatz sports apparel so loose fitting that every stiff breeze threatened to leave them naked in the streets.Michael Lewis -- The Blind Side
- Down there in a dim storage room adjacent to the furnace I've set up a realm of ersatz squalor.Margaret Atwood -- Cat's Eye
- Even his reliable friends the Germans failed him in this crisis: they preferred ersatz.Joseph Heller -- Catch-22
- A sentry woke him with breakfast: black bread and ersatz coffee.John Le Carre -- The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
- I don't want any ersatz soldiers, dragging their tails and ducking out when the party gets rough.Robert A. Heinlein -- Starship Troopers
- We're deflecting most of the local inquiries with an ersatz story about a massive propane-gas leak, but not too many people are buying it.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum
- The flat sandals lowered her height and the ersatz Gucci purse marked her as a gullible tourist in Hong Kong, exactly what she was not.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
- Maybe you've done some of your thinking by now?" she said, between the salad and the ersatz beef.Roger Zelazny -- My Name is Legion
- Whole networks he had used as Cain, listening posts and ersatz consulates that were no more than electronic espionage stations ... even the bloody specter of Medusa.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity
- We'll have a barrel of funfunfun, the voices clamorously chorused from below, the dreadful ersatz polka stuck now in its groove, repeating over and over a faint fat chord from an accordion.William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- To fill the demand of the new market, a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide.Clement Greenberg -- Avant-garde and Kitsch
ersatz = an inferior substitute or imitation
ersatz = an inferior imitation
ersatz = an inferior imitation of
ersatz = an inferior imitation of