expletive deleted

Attested since at least the 1930s, but popularized in the U.S. after the Watergate scandal, during which transcripts of conversations were published with profanity replaced by “[EXPLETIVE DELETED]”.

• Audio (US):

  (file)

expletive deleted (countable and uncountable, plural expletives deleted)

1. (euphemistic, humorous) An all-purpose profanity.
   • 2000, John W. Myers, The Crossland Shootout, Adventures of a Photojournalists, page 64:

     His most graphic threat was should I ever commit such a grave violation of his privacy, he would "rip your (string of expletives deleted) head off and (expletives deleted meaning "to defecate") down your (string of expletives deleted) neck."

   • 2013, J. David Markham, Mike Resnick, History Revisited: The Great Battles, Eminent Historians Take on the Great Works of Alternative History, . BenBella Books, →ISBN, page 41:

     Because you sold him out just to have a martyr, you expletive deleted.

expletive deleted (not comparable)

1. (euphemistic, humorous) An all-purpose profanity.
   • 2003, Toby Miller, “What It Is and What It Isn’t: Cultural Studies Meets Graduate Student Labor”, in Austin Sarat, Jonathan Simon, editors, Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Law: Moving Beyond Legal Realism, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 90:

     You are paid a lot of money; kindly do some expletive-deleted work.

expletive deleted

1. (rare, euphemistic, humorous) To have sex with.
   • 1993, Steve Allen, Make ’em laugh, Prometheus Books, page 293:

     I’d like to expletive deleted you.
     Oh, expletive, that’s what I’d like to do.

• discuss Uganda, get into someone's pants, see someone's etchings; see also Thesaurus:copulate or Thesaurus:copulate with