The phrase expletive deleted indicates that

profanity Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, is the usage of notionally word taboo, offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion (such a ...

has been censored from a text 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 Presidency of Richard Nixon, administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Resignation of Richard Nixon, Nix ...

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 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

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'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' 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 and former Conservative Party politician. Beginning his career in journalism, he was elected to Parliament in 1974 (serving until 1997), and wa ...

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

Christ Jesus ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Christianity, central figure of Christianity, the M ...

'' and ''

hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...

'' 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 with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...

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 language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

figleaf.

Technical definition

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

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

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

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

s, (most commonly),

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...

s, or (rarely)

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

s. Within

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, however, " expletive" is a technical term referring to a word that does not contribute semantically to the meaning of a sentence, such as an expletive attributive or a

dummy pronoun A dummy pronoun, also known as an expletive 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. A dummy pronoun is us ...

. An expletive in this technical sense is not necessarily rude.

References

{{Profanity Euphemisms Obscenity controversies Profanity Richard Nixon Watergate scandal

History

Technical definition

See also

References