supplant [ME] This is from Old French supplanter or Latin supplantare ‘trip up’, from sub- ‘from below’ and planta ‘sole of the foot’. Initially the word could be used both in the modern sense and in the original Latin sense. Milton, in Paradise Lost was one of the last to do this: ‘His Armes clung to his Ribs, his Leggs entwining Each other, till supplanted down he fell A monstrous Serpent.’