[NTLUG:Discuss] Bash command line completion

[Leroy Tennison]

I'm looking for a way to recover only the first few words of the 
immediately previous command.  For example,given the below

     ip route delete 192.168.100.0/24 dev eth0

I want to easily repeat

     ip route delete

so I can copy/paste additional routes from the output of 'ip route' 
(working with a firewall which has 10 interfaces, doing testing).

I realize I could write an alias but was hoping for something more 
direct, either I'm not searching for the right thing or the web isn't 
being helpful, ideas?