adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A substitute (usually of a person, position or role).

   "A mixture of horseradish and mustard often serves as a surrogate for wasabi."

2. 2
   a person appointed to represent or act on behalf of others wordnet
3. 3
   A person or animal that acts as a substitute for the social or pastoral role of another, such as a surrogate parent.
4. 4
   someone who takes the place of another person wordnet
5. 5
   A deputy for a bishop in granting licences for marriage. British

Show 5 more definitions

6. 6
   A politician or person of influence campaigning for a presidential candidate. US
7. 7
   A judicial officer of limited jurisdiction, who administers matters of probate and intestate succession and, in some cases, adoptions. US
8. 8
   Any of a range of Unicode codepoints which are used in pairs in UTF-16 to represent characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane.
9. 9
   An ersatz good.
10. 10
    Ellipsis of surrogate key. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis

Verb

1. 1
   To replace or substitute something with something else; to appoint a successor. transitive

Adjective

1. 1
   Of, concerning, relating to or acting as a substitute.

Adjective

1. 1
   providing or receiving nurture or parental care though not related by blood or legal ties wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

deputyreplacementsubstituteadoptiveadvocateagent

Example

More examples

"The new home works as a surrogate home."

Etymology

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

Related phrases

audience surrogatesurrogate activitysurrogate advertisingsurrogate courtsurrogate fathersurrogate keysurrogate mothersurrogate pairsurrogate parentsurrogate proxysurrogate motherutf 16

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