- replace
- replace, displace, supplant, supersede are rarely interchangeable terms, but they can carry the same basic meaning—to put a person or thing out of his or its place or into the place of another.Replace implies supplying a substitute for what has been lost, destroyed, used up, worn out, or dismissed{
a broken toy should not be immediately replaced if it has been broken by the child's care-lessness— Russell
}{replace a servant
}{constant flow of conversation from dawn till dark . . . only to be replaced by a night shift of resounding snores— Theodore Sturgeon
}or it may imply a preferring of one of two or more things that could satisfy a need{nor would I admit that the human actor can be replaced by a marionette— T. S. Eliot
}and sometimes it implies a putting back into a proper or assigned place{replace a book on a shelf
}{the guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest— Dickens
}Displace implies a dislodging, ousting, or putting or crowding out followed by a replacing. This dual implication of putting out of place and of replacing is the chief distinction of displace in contrast with replace{the weight of water displaced by a floating body is equal to that of the displacing body
}However one of these ideas is sometimes stressed more than the other so that the emphasis is either on ousting{American democracy was the response to challenge of Europeans displaced to a continental wilderness and cut loose from many ancient ties— Dorothy Thompson
}or on replacing{as he became more conscious of the bar accounts, of the kitchen expenses, the benevolence was displaced by calculation— Gorer
}Supplant basically implies a dispossessing or ousting by craft, fraud, or treachery and a taking or usurping of the place, possessions, or privileges of the one dispossessed or ousted{you three from Milan did supplant good Prospero— Shak.
}{the pretty young wife finds herself in the humiliating position of having been supplanted by a brisk, unlovely woman— Bullett
}{eager to succeed Louis and even to supplant him— Belloc
}But supplant sometimes implies an uprooting and replacing rather than a dispossessing and usurping; in such cases trickery or treachery is no longer implied{his tutor tried to supplant his fears by arousing his sense of curiosity
}{don't claim that the Divine revelation has been supplanted . . . but that it has been amplified— Mackenzie
}{the architect, to serve the vogue, uptilts greenhouses thirty stories high on stilts, supplanting walls of stone with sheets of glass— Hillyer
}Supersede implies a causing of another to be set aside, abandoned, or rejected as inferior, no longer of use or value, or obsolete{the old-fashioned fishing luggers with their varicolored sails have been superseded by motorboats— Amer. Guide Series: La.
}{that is the worst of erudition —that the next scholar sucks the few drops of honey that you have accumulated, sets right your blunders, and you are superseded— Benson
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
