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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

surrogate.

A substitute (usually of a person, position or role).

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsʌɹəɡɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝəɡɪt/Canada, General-American
  1. A substitute (usually of a person, position or role).

    A mixture of horseradish and mustard often serves as a surrogate for wasabi.
  2. A person or animal that acts as a substitute for the social or pastoral role of another, such as a surrogate parent.

  3. A deputy for a bishop in granting licences for marriage.

    UK
  4. A politician or person of influence campaigning for a presidential candidate.

    US
  5. A judicial officer of limited jurisdiction, who administers matters of probate and intestate succession and, in some cases, adoptions.

    US
  6. Any of a range of Unicode codepoints which are used in pairs in UTF-16 to represent characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane.

  7. An ersatz good.

  8. Ellipsis of surrogate key.

    abbreviation · alt-of · ellipsis
Where this word comes from

From Latin surrogātus, perfect passive participle of surrogō (“to choose someone as a substitute”); a variant of subrogō, from sub (“under”) + rogō (“ask”).

adj/ˈsʌɹəɡɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝəɡɪt/Canada, General-American
  1. Of, concerning, relating to or acting as a substitute.

Where this word comes from

From Latin surrogātus, perfect passive participle of surrogō (“to choose someone as a substitute”); a variant of subrogō, from sub (“under”) + rogō (“ask”).

verb/ˈsʌɹəɡeɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝəɡeɪt/Canada, General-American
  1. To replace or substitute something with something else; to appoint a successor.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Latin surrogātus, perfect passive participle of surrogō (“to choose someone as a substitute”); a variant of subrogō, from sub (“under”) + rogō (“ask”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.