An artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.
Ersatz can be traced back in English to 1875, but it really came into prominence during World War I. Borrowed from German, where ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective in English to items like coffee (from acorns) and flour (from potatoes) - ersatz products resulting from the privations of war. By the time World War II came around, bringing with it a resurgence of the word along with more substitute products, ersatz was wholly entrenched in the language. Today, ersatz can be applied to almost anything that seems like an artificial imitation.
From Cambridge Dictionary:
Used instead of something else, usually because the other thing is too expensive or rare.
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