expletive
expletive Lexical Profile
expletive Game Scores & Validity
• noun
An oath, swear word, or profane exclamation, typically uttered in anger, pain, or frustration.
"The broadcast editor had to bleep out several expletives from the live interview."
A word or syllable that contributes nothing to the semantic meaning of a sentence but fulfills a syntactic or metrical requirement.
"Linguists classify the pronoun "it" in weather expressions as a syntactic expletive."
• adjective
Serving to fill out a sentence, verse, or grammatical construction, or added merely for emphasis.
"In the sentence "there are many reasons to celebrate," the word "there" functions as an expletive element."
Word Nuance & Usage
While in everyday language "expletive" almost exclusively refers to a curse word or profanity, in linguistics it strictly denotes a dummy word (such as "it" in "it is raining") that fills a syntactic position without adding semantic meaning.
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Derived from Late Latin "expletivus" (serving to fill out), from the Latin verb "explere" meaning "to fill up" (from "ex-" meaning "out, thoroughly" and "plere" meaning "to fill"). The sense shifted from a grammatical filler word used for rhetorical emphasis to an oath or swear word.