Substitution

//ˌsʌb.stɪˈtjuː.ʃən// noun

noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of substituting or the state of being substituted. countable, uncountable

    "In this football tournament, three substitutions can be made during the match."

  2. 2
    the act of putting one thing or person in the place of another: wordnet
  3. 3
    A substitute or replacement. countable, uncountable

    "Gary is off this weekend, so Jeff will be his substitution."

  4. 4
    an event in which one thing is substituted for another wordnet
  5. 5
    The replacement of an atom, or group of atoms, in a compound, with another. countable, especially, uncountable
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  1. 6
    The expansion of the lexicon of a language by native means in correspondence to a foreign term. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
agencyagentalienationalternatealternativeamends

Example

More examples

"Is Algeria really following a policy of import substitution?"

Etymology

From Middle French substitution, from Late Latin substitutio.

Related phrases

Caesar substitutionLiskov substitution principleback substitutionblood substitutionelectrophilic substitutionfree substitutionlexical substitutionnucleophilic substitutionpenal substitutionstring substitutionsubstitution ciphersubstitution code

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.