second-stringer vs surrogate

second-stringer

noun
  • A person who is not good enough to be considered proficient but may be useful as a backup. 

  • A person who plays second string. A person who is kept on a sports team as a backup in case a "first-string" player is unavailable. 

surrogate

noun
  • A substitute (usually of a person, position or role). 

  • A politician or person of influence campaigning for a presidential candidate. 

  • Any of a range of Unicode codepoints which are used in pairs in UTF-16 to represent characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane. 

  • An ersatz good. 

  • A deputy for a bishop in granting licences for marriage. 

  • A person or animal that acts as a substitute for the social or pastoral role of another, such as a surrogate parent. 

  • A judicial officer of limited jurisdiction, who administers matters of probate and intestate succession and, in some cases, adoptions. 

verb
  • To replace or substitute something with something else; to appoint a successor. 

adj
  • Of, concerning, relating to or acting as a substitute. 

How often have the words second-stringer and surrogate occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )