Expletive may refer to: *

Expletive (linguistics) An expletive is a word or phrase inserted into a sentence that is not needed to express the basic meaning of the sentence. It is regarded as semantically null or a placeholder. Expletives are not insignificant or meaningless in all senses; they may ...

, a word or phrase that is not needed to express the basic meaning of the sentence *

Expletive pronoun A dummy pronoun is a deictic pronoun that fulfills a syntactical requirement without providing a contextually explicit meaning of its referent. As such, it is an example of exophora. Dummy pronouns are used in many Germanic languages, includin ...

, a pronoun used as subject or other verb argument that is meaningless but syntactically required *

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 ...

, a word that contributes nothing to meaning but suggests the strength of feeling of the speaker *

Profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...

or swear word, a word or expression that is strongly impolite or offensive

See also