Timeline for How to understand "bomb the expletive out of something"? Is that an idiomatic expression?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 13, 2016 at 1:27 | vote | accept | dennylv | ||
| Nov 27, 2015 at 9:11 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie | This user was probably reading a secondary source that literally says “bombing the expletive out of”, such as this word-for-word match: usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2015/11/16/… | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 14:01 | comment | added | RedSonja | Using the word "expletive" in this sarcastic way is a leftover from the Nixon (remember him?) scandal. Some poor soul had to transcribe the contents of many hours of tapes, containing frequent swearwords. To spare the feelings of sensitive hearers the transcripts were Bowdlerised when being read out in public, by the use of "expletive deleted". | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 13:37 | comment | added | TimR | It's editorial politeness, substituting the kind of word for what was actually said. By convention, the quote should read "...for bombing the {expletive} out of..." -- that is, there should be some additional typographic indication, such as curly braces, to show that a word has been dropped. | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 11:43 | comment | added | gnasher729 | The use of the word "expletive" would be absolutely not idiomatic. You wouldn't use the word "expletive", you would use a word that is an expletive. | |
| S Nov 26, 2015 at 11:23 | history | edited | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
sth is neither a word nor a common English abbreviation.
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| S Nov 26, 2015 at 11:23 | history | suggested | Jon Hanna | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
sth is neither a word nor a common English abbreviation.
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| Nov 26, 2015 at 11:14 | answer | added | Jon Hanna | timeline score: 5 | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 11:12 | answer | added | user26885 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 11:00 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Nov 26, 2015 at 11:23 | |||||
| Nov 26, 2015 at 9:53 | comment | added | Fillet | It looks like Mr Trump's expletive of choice was "hell". edition.cnn.com/2015/07/10/politics/… | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 8:47 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglishLL/status/669799531492605952 | ||
| Nov 26, 2015 at 8:14 | answer | added | user24743 | timeline score: 9 | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 6:44 | answer | added | DRF | timeline score: 10 | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 6:44 | comment | added | V.V. | I agree. My first thought is that it is used as a substitution for some curses. My second thought is that it is a metaphor. | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 6:37 | comment | added | dennylv | yeah, you are right. That's it —— bomb the s--- out of its oil field! | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 6:29 | comment | added | Damkerng T. | Not sure if I get it right. But I think the word "expletive" there is used in the place of some other expletive word. (Likely the F-word, or maybe the S-word.) A related concept: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_deleted. | |
| Nov 26, 2015 at 6:03 | history | asked | dennylv | CC BY-SA 3.0 |