Someone who takes the place of another (as when things get dangerous or difficult)

Usage examples of substitute.

Bureau of Public Health as a meat substitute for the poor, and affordable by them.

Having done this, I notified the Senate of the fact, and this enabled the wiser heads of the Senate to substitute for the house resolution a resolution approving my action, and in this way the passage of the dangerous resolution was avoided.

Delinquents contrived to purchase their escape from the bastinado by a sum of money, and French gallantry substituted with respect to females the birch for the cane.

If an incision is made in the bark of the stems, and the crown of the root, at the commencement of spring, a resinous gum exudes with a special aromatic flavour as of musk or benzoin, for either of which it can be substituted.

Halitner Grant, as Bett substituted for him most of the time, and he no longer stopped to talk with her in the mornings.

Halimer Grant, as Bett substituted for him most of the time, and he no longer stopped to talk with her in the mornings.

Did we really need licensing boards to protect us from hair braiders, Labor Department rules that keep kids from bagging groceries, an FDA that outlaws fat substitutes?

Dame Honeyball was a likely, plump, bustling little woman, and no bad substitute for that paragon of hostesses, Dame Quickly.

He was spiritually akin to Goethe, also, in that he guarded himself strictly against substituting for the contents of our perception conveyed by nature purely hypothetical entities which, while fashioned after the world of the senses, are, in principle, imperceptible.

She had laid at his feet the printing presses and lithography cameras and delivery vans that allowed him to fight, if not a genuine war, then a tolerable substitute.

It has been contended, and apparently with much reason, that if the use of substitutes were prohibited this would not lead to an increased use of domestic barley, inasmuch as the supply of home barley suitable for malting purposes is of a limited nature.

It was her own do-it-yourself enchantment, a kind of self-hypnosis, substitute for God knew how many thousand dollars worth of psychotherapy.

For microcephalous children of some years of age are a substitute for imaginary, because never practicable, vivisectory experiments, concerning the connection of body and mind.

Her staff was very good at taking the product of a computer, which would simply substitute rough morpheme equivalents in bundles, with various feature and intonation markings attached, and turning these chunks of raw language into suitable vehicles for communication.

When Walpole heard me say this he offered to be my substitute, to which she agreed.