The phrase expletive deleted refers to profanity which has been censored by the author or by a subsequent censor, usually appearing in place of the profanity. The phrase has been used for this purpose since at least the 1930s, but became more widely used in the United States after the

Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...

History

Compelled by a subpoena to provide the contents of the White House taping system to the House Judiciary Committee in April 1974, President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

ordered transcripts of the tapes to be prepared. After a cursory inspection of the transcripts, Nixon, shocked at viewing several profanity-laced discussions amongst the White House's inner-circle, ordered that every use of profanity be replaced by " XPLETIVE DELETED. The transcripts were published in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and elicited shock in much of the country, given Nixon's generally staid public image and the fact that contemporary media coverage of politicians did not usually report candidates' profanity use. As Nixon biographer

Jonathan Aitken Jonathan William Patrick Aitken (born 30 August 1942) is a British author, Church of England priest, former prisoner and former Conservative Party politician. Beginning his career in journalism, he was elected to Parliament in 1974 (serving unt ...

noted, Nixon had a rather broad view on what constituted profanity, and had ordered comparatively minor outbursts like ''

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was ...

'' and ''

hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...

'' to be replaced as expletives. Seeing the jarring phrase repeatedly within the transcripts seemed to give the public the impression that the words used were far harsher than what actually appeared on the tapes. The phrase entered the public imagination to the point where protesters outside the White House held up picket signs reading, "IMPEACH THE (EXPLETIVE DELETED)!" In later years, the phrase became commonplace as an

ironic Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...

expression which indicates that a profanity has been omitted; this catchphrase has passed into general usage as a convenient

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

figleaf.

Technical definition

The term ''expletive'' is commonly used outside linguistics to refer to any bad language (or profanity), used with or without meaning. ''Expletives'' in this wide sense may be

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

s, or (most commonly),

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...

s, or (rarely)

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

s. Within linguistics, an expletive always refers to a word without meaning, namely a syntactic expletive or

expletive attributive An expletive attributive is an adjective or adverb (or adjectival or adverbial phrase) that does not contribute to the meaning of a sentence, but is used to intensify its emotional force. Often such words or phrases are regarded as profanity or ...

. In this technical sense, an expletive is not necessarily rude.

References

{{Profanity Euphemisms Obscenity controversies Profanity Richard Nixon Watergate scandal

History

Technical definition

See also

References