adj. 1 wordy, verbose, prolix, repetitious, redundant, tautological, iterative, reiterative, pleonastic; unnecessary, unneeded, needless, unessential, non-essential, gratuitous, superfluous Her speech is punctuated by expletive words and phrases, like 'like, you know', and so forth
n. 2 oath, swear-word, curse, obscenity, epithet, Colloq cuss-word, dirty word, four-letter word Expletives sometimes lend an air of naturalness to written dialogue 3 filler, padding, redundancy, tautology, pleonasm Some grammarians term the 'It' in 'It is raining' an expletive