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单词 expletive
释义

expletive

/ɪkˈspliːtɪv / /ɛkˈspliːtɪv/
noun
1An oath or swear word: he was greeted by a stream of expletives...
  • 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

swear word, oath, curse, obscenity, profanity, epithet, imprecation, four-letter word, exclamation;
(expletives) bad language, foul language, strong language, swearing
informal dirty word
North American informal cuss word, cuss
2 Grammar A word or phrase used to fill out a sentence or a line of verse without adding to the sense.I think people don't use ‘it’ for exactly that reason Todd - it's so often an expletive or a dummy pronoun that it would get confusing....
  • Finally, both the antecedent of PRO and PRO itself have to be an argument and cannot be an expletive.

Synonyms

filler, fill-in, stopgap, meaningless word/phrase, redundant word/phrase, superfluous word/phrase, unnecessary word/phrase
adjective Grammar
(Of a word or phrase) serving to fill out a sentence or line of verse.Icelandic takes the non-referential property of quasi-argumental null subjects as basic, therefore quasi-argumental null subjects in the language can be interpreted as basically expletive....
  • ‘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).

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更新时间:2024/11/12 10:53:00