Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday August 22, 2001
supplant \suh-PLANT\ , transitive verb:
1. To take the place of (another), especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics; as, a rival supplants another.
2. To take the place of and serve as a substitute for.
He's your rival. The one you'll have to supplant.
-- Peter Brooks, World Elsewhere
In traditional accounts, early Greek times appear as a succession of migrations; one tribe drives out and supplants another until driven out in turn by a third, and this process may have lasted many hundreds of years.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization
Economic opportunities for a saddler and harness maker were beginning to decline . . . as railroads supplanted the stagecoach trade.
-- Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White
Supplant derives from Latin supplantare, "to put one's foot under another, to throw down a person by tripping up his heels," from sub-, "under" + plantare, "to stamp the ground with the foot," from planta, "the sole of the foot."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for supplant
