substitution
Pluralsubstitutions
- 1The act of putting one thing in the place of another, or the state of having been replaced.
The recipe allows the substitution of honey for sugar without changing the texture.
A late substitution brought a fresh player onto the field.
Similarreplacement, swap, exchange
Note
This is the general sense behind all the others, and it reached English through Middle French from Late Latin substitutio. It works as an uncountable noun for the process and as a countable one for each single instance: a football side can make three substitutions in a match, each a separate swap of players. The chemist's meaning and the linguist's meaning narrow this same idea to a field.
- 2A person or thing that takes the place of another; a replacement.
Margarine makes a decent substitution for butter in most recipes.
The understudy served as the substitution when the lead actor fell ill.
Similarreplacement, alternative, stand-in
- 3In chemistry, the process by which one atom or group of atoms in a compound takes the place of another.
The substitution of a hydroxyl group for a hydrogen atom yields an alcohol.
Chemists tracked the substitution as bromine replaced a carbon-bound hydrogen.
Note
Organic chemistry is where this sense does most of its work, naming a kind of reaction as well as a single change in a molecule. A classic instance is a halogen displacing a hydrogen atom on an alkane, which yields a haloalkane. The everyday construction carries straight into the lab: one group is substituted for another, and the incoming group takes over the departing one's position.
- 4The growth of a language's vocabulary through native word-formation that mirrors a foreign term.
Icelandic often favors substitution, forming native compounds rather than adopting international loanwords.
The new dictionary records each substitution coined to replace a foreign borrowing.
Note
Linguists set this process against borrowing. Instead of taking a foreign word whole, a language builds its own equivalent from native material, matched to the foreign model. It overlaps with loan translation, where a foreign word is rendered part by part. The useful distinction is that substitution names the native outcome, set against the loanword the language chose not to adopt.
Practice
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Origin
This word comes from Middle French substitution, which came from Late Latin substitutio.