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in reply to Re^7: MJD's Contract Warnings - courtesy of Perlweekly
in thread MJDs Contract Warnings - courtesy of Perlweekly

Expletive the noun is different than the adjective

I've been admittedly slow in getting back to this, but I *had* looked "expletive" up in my Concise Oxford Dictionary, and I'm still not seeing a word that I would regard either as an expletive, or as expletive.
I think I'll just assume that you meant "I still don't appreciate the innuendo" ... and you can correct me on that if you think it's important enough - assuming, of course, that you even become aware of my having (eventually) responded.

Cheers,
Rob
  • Comment on Re^8: MJD's Contract Warnings - courtesy of Perlweekly

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Re^9: MJD's Contract Warnings - courtesy of Perlweekly
by chacham (Prior) on Apr 21, 2015 at 14:39 UTC

    OED, ok, let's try this online: expletive (OED): An oath or swear word. swear word (OED, advanced): synonym expletive, and gives examples in the Culture section. Specifically, in the fourth paragraph "The most common", the third sentence "The strongest swear words" list two words, the second of which was used for the fifth word of post.

    PM has a nice notification system. So, it doesn't really matter when you reply, so long as you reply to the post of the person you want to see it.

[reply]

      I don't see how any of the words in the quote have anything to do with oaths and swearing -- words which to me are akin to "promise".

      It makes more sense (imho) to think of "expletive" in its original (i.e. what I would consider its more proper) sense -- namely, filler.
      Now, people (pretending to be grammarians) have come to equate "words which were inserted unnecessarily" with "words which should be stricken out".
      And hence, any word you think shouldn't be there is now being called an expletive, even if your reasoning has nothing to do with superfluousness.
      A better example of expletive, in this stricter/more proper sense, might be:

      You know b....y well what a f.....g expletive is!
      But in the quote, the fifth word is not filler. Rather, it is simply a vulgarity. It's not even obscene, let alone profane.

      Now, the last word of the quote is a different matter, and y'all have already hashed that one quite to death.

      I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

        Time for a battle of the dictionaries :)

        The OED link cited above does mention that some people are offended by intensifiers and some are not. Regardless, it is considered an expletive.

        Mind you, disagreeing about whether "expletive" was the correct word or not does not change the meaning of my comment. But, where would we be without the exactitude of the techies. :)

[reply]

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