supplant
Americanverb
Synonym Usage
See replace.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
supplantsimple
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supplantssimple
-
have supplantedperfect
-
has supplantedperfect
-
am supplantingprogressive
-
are supplantingprogressive
-
is supplantingprogressive
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have been supplantingperfect progressive
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has been supplantingperfect progressive
Past
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supplantedsimple
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had supplantedperfect
-
was supplantingprogressive
-
were supplantingprogressive
-
had been supplantingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of supplant
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English supplanten, from Latin supplantāre “to trip up, overthrow”; see sup-, plant
Explanation
Kate was out sick for a whole month, and when she came back to school, Jessie had supplanted her as the funny girl at the lunch table. Supplant means "to take the place of." Being supplanted is something that often happens to ideas or ways of thinking. Encouraging children's freedom has supplanted old ideas about children being better seen than heard. After a shocking upset at Wimbledon, a new tennis player has supplanted the reigning champion.
Vocabulary lists containing supplant
The Tempest
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"Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
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This Week in Words: January 5 - 11, 2019
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
While artificial intelligence can help advisers operate more efficiently, there’s little indication that it can supplant experienced financial planners.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
Soccer probably won’t supplant my love for baseball, football, basketball and hockey — but I can now mention it in the same breath as them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
It might not be a coincidence that Vermeer’s stock started to rise in the mid-1800s, when photography began to supplant painting’s monopoly on images.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
The company fell further behind Anthropic, whose recent advancements stirred fresh fears that AI could supplant traditional software and services, briefly triggering a stock-market selloff.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
In this way, Goddard’s voice began to supplant his own internal moderator.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
This is a crucial piece to the puzzle, because production of one gigabyte of HBM supplants three gigabytes of other types of memory, worsening shortages down the line.
From Barron's ● Jan. 9, 2026
In other cases, the court simply supplants its own intuition or understanding of the facts for that of the trial court, a fundamental violation of the deference normally afforded trial court findings of fact.
From Slate ● Jul. 29, 2024
The recently snared behemoth supplants the previous record of 18 feet, 9 inches, which was set in 2020 by professional trappers.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 21, 2023
Their carbon footprint will further drop as renewable energy supplants electricity generated from fossil fuels in the years to come, she said.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 26, 2022
His chances of success are many times those of the man he supplants.
From The Business of Mining A brief non-technical exposition of the principles involved in the profitable operation of mines by Arthur J. Hoskin
Framed this way, mathematicians are not in a race against A.I.s, waiting for the dreaded Kasparov moment when we become supplanted.
From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2026
Once TV supplanted radio as a source for scripted entertainment, news and information became the primary mission of CBS’ radio division that began in 1927.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2026
Just as the smartphone supplanted PCs as people’s main computing device, someday something will replace it.
From Barron's ● Apr. 24, 2026
The rise of AI has initiated the latest round of anxiety that workers might be supplanted by machines.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 24, 2026
He was one of the gods who’d supplanted Athena as a war deity.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
For now, ideas are converging around a new human interface that will eventually replace the decades-old graphical approach and feature conversations with Siri supplanting mouse clicks and finger taps.
From Barron's ● Apr. 24, 2026
Klapper described the AI tool as a co-intelligence, akin to a “judicial sous chef,” that will support members of the bench without supplanting them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026
As for world trade, the dollar still reigns supreme; no single alternative currency is anywhere near supplanting it.
From Slate ● Feb. 2, 2026
There’s also some evidence that artificial intelligence is supplanting some jobs.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 26, 2025
Her son’s resistance to schoolwork was a mild disorder that many children go through, but his study of chess, an intellectual activity, was supplanting it.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
