Two of our most popular articles deal with these words (i.e., “there,” “it”) and how they are used as place holders for the rhetorical subject.

Another expletive along the same lines is “here.”

Expletives words fill a grammatical role (such as standing in for the subject) but don’t add meaning to the sentence. Thus, “it is true that we are rich” could be better written “that we are rich is true” or simply, “we are rich.” (That last revision uses the rhetorical subject as the grammatical subject, making it, in my mind, the better of the two possible revisions.)

The word “expletive” is often used to mean “a bad word that we don’t use in polite communication,” but, in many cases, those words being called expletives are simply adjectives and adverbs, however impolite or offensive they seem to some readers.

[Expletive deleted] just happens to only be used for scatological, obscene, or otherwise scurrilous wordage. Expletive, used this way, just refers to the “unidentified bit” that is removed.

ex- = out
pleo = fill

so an “expletive” is something that “fills out” your sentence. Words like “it” fill out the need for a subject; words like [expletive deleted] just fill it out like padding.

As in, Barry said, “Those ungrateful [expletive deleted] unions are starting to annoy me!”

I guess have been associating “expletive” with rude and scurrilous words.