Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To remove material that is considered offensive or objectionable from (a book, for example).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To expurgate in editing by expunging words or passages considered offensive or indelicate.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To expurgate, as a book, by omitting or modifying the parts considered offensive; to remove morally objectionable parts; -- said of literary texts.
WordNet 3.0
- v. edit by omitting or modifying parts considered indelicate
Etymologies
- From Thomas Bowdler, who in 1818 published a censored version of Shakespeare, expurgating "those words and expressions... which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." (Wiktionary)
- After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare in 1818. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“His actions did spawn the term "bowdlerize," which means to gut a work of literature.”
“Who is anyone to expurgate or bowdlerize the word of God?”
Lionel: Obama in Cairo: The Immutable Sapience of the Good Book(s)
“They take an idea, bowdlerize it, blow it up, make it infantile and spend $100 million to give people a brief escape from their boring and often demeaning lives at work.”
“The above excerpt, “Hamlet,” illustrates how such lingual poverty might bowdlerize the legacy of poetry.”
Quick Review 04 : Christian Bök : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
“I asked the guy who would bowdlerize Larry Niven if given the chance this question: "If someone was writing the biography of your life, would you want it to have a sex scene?”
“Jane, please, please never let them bowdlerize you.”
Firedoglake » Murray Waas Says VandeHei Can Take a Victory Lap
“It doesn't matter whether we bowdlerize the lyrics, the musical style has nothing familiar to them other than a major scale and it will not strike them as comfortable or familiar unless they are lapsed Luterans.”
“I bowdlerize the comment, which concluded with a request that I spare him further examples of local superstition, a subject with which he was only too well acquainted.”
“He Anglicized the name -- Yelyena into Ellaynah -- just as it had been his idea to reduce "Alleluia" to Allie and bowdlerize himself, Cohen from Warsaw, into Cone.”
“She should not be allowed to disguise and bowdlerize it to suit the unwelcome tastes she had acquired at school.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bowdlerize’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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The Blacklist
Stop SOPA.
blackout, redact, bowdlerize, censor, remove, conceal, bleach, bleep, blue-pencil, control, edit, excise and 24 more...
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Filter 1
Hard words level 1
besotted, altricial, consecrate, consternate, desuetude, detractor, dissolute, divisive, emaciated, enamored, ensconce, garishly and 76 more...
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Kathy C's List
My favorite words
golconda, au fait, purlicue, tautonym, cunctatory, gynecomastia, vesta, imprimatur, efflux, antediluvian, protean, phlegmatic and 24 more...
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WF - Words from Proper Names
bowdlerize, boycott, caesarean, lynch, pasteurize, sadist, sandwich, hoover, braille, wellington, cardigan, macintosh and 11 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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Forgotten English 1
jacal, mastaba, lucarne, quoin, triglyph, gargarice, nimgimmer, phrenologize, fleam, eaglestone, toad eater, king's evil and 156 more...
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GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
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My GRE words
abase, abate, aberrant, abet, abeyance, abject, abjure, ablution, abnegation, abortive, abrogate, abscission and 140 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Namesakes
Words derived from names, be they historical, literary, or mythological.
quixotic, cereal, odyssey, jovial, mercurial, erotic, achilles' heel, confucianism, lovecraftian, narcissism, echo, fallopian and 101 more...
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Don't Be a LAZY LINGUIST!
Words that remind me to:
Stop speaking with laze.
Exercise my intellect more than my tongue.
Choose Better Company.
This is not the "Ooh, I love the way these words ...splore, inoculate, dysphemism, bruit, mellifluous, winsome, rancor, aplomb, equivocate, palpable, equivocate, licentious and 128 more...
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My GRE word list
polemic, ad hominem, fallacious, comity, pugnacious, laconic, veracious, prosaic, contrite, paucity, alacrity, gregarious and 176 more...
Tweets
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