expletive
/ɪkˈspliːtɪv
/ /ɛkˈspliːtɪv/- She let out a long string of oaths and expletives, carefully picking herself up from the floor.
- Instead of a lesson in experimental theatre, they were bombarded with graphic scenes of violence and a non-stop stream of expletives.
- The game remained heated, with the sent-off players voicing their unhappiness on the sidelines and adding to a stream of expletives.
Synonyms
- Finally, both the antecedent of PRO and PRO itself have to be an argument and cannot be an expletive.
Synonyms
- ‘There’ is used as the subject of an existential sentence in standard English while it is used in most other situations in which a ‘dummy’ or expletive subject is necessary.
- A-positions are not necessarily assigned a theta role: The subject position may be occupied by an expletive element.
Origin
Late Middle English (as an adjective): from late Latin expletivus, from explere 'fill out', from ex- 'out' + plere 'fill'. The noun sense 'word used merely to fill out a sentence' (early 17th century) was applied specifically to a swear word in the early 19th century.
This word is from late Latin expletivus, from explere ‘fill out’, from ex- ‘out’ and plere ‘to fill’. The general sense ‘word used merely to fill out a sentence’ (early 17th century) was applied specifically to an oath or swear word in the early 19th century. The phrase expletive deleted gained a high profile in the 1970s in the submission of recorded conversations involving President Nixon to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives (30 April 1974).