In grammar, an expletive is a word that fills a structural position without referring to a particular person or thing. The usual English examples are it and there in certain uses. They are often called dummy subjects.
Dummy it and there
- It for weather or time. It is raining. The subject it fills the normal position before the verb. It has no antecedent. The same pattern appears in It is noon.
- There to introduce something. There are two coats by the door. The construction introduces the two coats. The phrase by the door tells where they are.
When the same words have other jobs
In I found my coat. It was wet, it refers to the coat. In Leave the coats there, there points to a place. In everyday speech, expletive can also mean a swear word. The grammatical term describes how a word functions in a sentence.
