adjective
- serving to fill out or complete; filling a space or time without adding essential meaning or substance
- relating to or functioning as an expletive; used to fill out a metrical line in verse
Usage: formal; rare
Usage: literary; technical
Examples
- The expletory phrases in the speech added length but little substance.
- In poetry, expletory words are sometimes inserted to maintain the meter.
- The report contained expletory sections that could have been condensed.
- Expletory language often appears in formal writing to meet length requirements.