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syntactic expletive

syntactic expletive noun: a pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required.

Noun

syntactic expletive (plural syntactic expletives)

  1. A pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required.
    • In the sentences "It is a hammer that is needed." and "There are hammers in the toolbox.", both "it" and "there" are syntactic expletives.

Forms of syntactic expletive

pluralsyntactic expletives

Questions about syntactic expletive

What does syntactic expletive mean?
Syntactic expletive means a pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required.
What part of speech is syntactic expletive?
Syntactic expletive is a noun.
What is the plural of syntactic expletive?
The plural of syntactic expletive is syntactic expletives.

Words near syntactic expletive in the dictionary

  1. synstigmatic
  2. synsystematic
  3. SYNT
  4. syntaces
  5. syntactic
  6. syntactic expletive
  7. syntactic expletives
  8. syntactic middle voice
  9. syntactic salt
  10. syntactic sugar
  11. syntactical

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: syntactic expletive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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