Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
No pronunciation record was provided for this word.
verb
Replace the following string with the one that appears after it.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: imperative-only
Qualifier: informal or even humorous
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
This comes from the command s (substitute), originally in ed and also found in Perl, to replace one string with another. Although the command does not require slashes (other punctuation can be used as delimiters) in this informal use (i.e., outside of scripting) slashes are virtually universally used. In the original command, a trailing g means that the change in strings should be effected every time the first string appears (not just the first time it appears); this g is often used in this informal verb also, as described in the usage note below.
