- expletive
- 1612, originally "a word or phrase serving to fill out a sentence or metrical line," from L.L. expletivus "serving to fill out," from L. explere "fill out," from ex- "out" + plere "to fill" (see plenary). Sense of "exclamation," often in the form of a cuss word, first recorded 1815 in Sir Walter Scott, popularized by edited transcripts of Watergate tapes (mid-1970s), in which expletive deleted replaced Preisdent Nixon's salty expressions.