# surrogate

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˈsʌɹəɡɪt/ · frequency rank #17,729

## Definitions
1. A substitute (usually of a person, position or role).
2. A person or animal that acts as a substitute for the social or pastoral role of another, such as a surrogate parent.
3. A deputy for a bishop in granting licences for marriage.
4. A politician or person of influence campaigning for a presidential candidate.
5. A judicial officer of limited jurisdiction, who administers matters of probate and intestate succession and, in some cases, adoptions.
6. Any of a range of Unicode codepoints which are used in pairs in UTF-16 to represent characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane.
7. An ersatz good.
8. Ellipsis of surrogate key.

## Etymology
From Latin surrogātus, perfect passive participle of surrogō (“ask”); a variant of subrogō, from sub (“under”) + rogō (“ask”).

## Easily confused with
- **surrogacy** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/surrogacy-vs-surrogate)

## Common misspellings (11)
`srurogate`, `ssurrogate`, `surogate`, `surorgate`, `surrgoate`, `surroagte`, `surrogaet`, `surrogatte`, `surroggate`, `surrogtae`, `usrrogate`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/surrogate