In this article, we discuss expressive adjectives (‘the damn keys’) and
epithets (‘that bastard John’). In recent literature (see Potts 2005 and Gutzmann 2019), these expressions have received a parallel semantic treatment. However, EAs and epithets present a remarkable difference, namely, only the former exhibit argument extension, an apparent mismatch between syntax and semantics whereby EAs affect a syntactic constituent other than the one they directly modify. After a brief introduction and the presentation of the puzzle (sections 1 and 2), we advance a novel semantico-pragmatic approach to EAs that explains this difference (section 3). According to this view, EAs are Isolated CIs, roughly put, expressions that bear propositional expressive meaning (and no at-issue meaning), and do not interact with the surrounding at-issue material in terms of functional application. In section 4, we present data that lends additional support to our proposal (and represents a prima facie challenge for some alternative approaches). Finally, in section 5 we discuss the alternative approaches to argument extension in Potts 2005 and Gutzmann 2019, and show some of their shortcomings.