ersatz

adj

1. inauthentic or inadequate substitute or imitation

   “Back then, we could only get ersatz coffee.”

   “In these days of “rolled” gold, electro-plate, and undetectable pearls, it is curious that almost the only honest Ersatz material known to the goldsmith's art should be utterly forgotten.”

   “Ersatzgas, Ersatzpfennige. Ersatz has become a brave word in Germany. As a substantive it means War Reparations. As part of compounded words it means substitute.”

   ““There we are, you see! No discipline, no backbone! Have you by any chance any discipline, sir? Have you any character? Everything is fake. Everything is ersatz [translating German Ersatz]—vulgarity is everywhere I look.””

   “They forge documents indicating that Winston Churchill plotted World War I; they manufacture an ersatz fossil suggesting that humans have been around as long as apes; they create a pseudo-Gospel supposedly written by Paul in which he claims that Jesus never performed miracles..”

noun

1. Something made in imitation; an effigy or substitute.

   “The important point I want to emphasize here is that, regardless of a Government agency's conception of what a consumer expects of a food item, by and large the consumer detests the use of chemicals in foods as substitutes for nutritious, wholesome natural ingredients which improve flavor and quality. The consumer has little to gain in purchasing a product containing questionable ersatzes if his life is to be endangered or he will suffer ill effects.”

   “What intrigues us is what will happen when the ersatzes for the ersatzes come along. Will characters start substituting for actors, bona fide dogs for barking ladies; will people start looking at people again instead of television and at nature instead of at documentaries?”

   “They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.”

   ““You do Berlin a disservice, baron. We too have mastered a few things: ersatzes, for instance, and the metaphysics of fictionalism—””