expletive [LME] 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’ [LME] was applied specifically to an oath or swear word in the mid 17th 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), although it is recorded from the 1930s.