Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Tending to censure; highly critical.
- adj. Expressing censure.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Addicted to censure; apt to blame or condemn; severe in commenting on others or on their actions, manners, writings, etc.; captious; carping: as, a censorious critic.
- Implying or expressing censure: as, censorious remarks.
- Synonyms Hypercritical, faultfinding, carping, captious.
Wiktionary
- adj. Addicted to censure and scolding; apt to blame or condemn; severe in making remarks on others, or on their writings or manners.
- adj. Implying or expressing censure.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Addicted to censure; apt to blame or condemn; severe in making remarks on others, or on their writings or manners.
- adj. Implying or expressing censure.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. harshly critical or expressing censure
Etymologies
- Latin cēnsōrius, of a censor, from cēnsor, Roman censor; see censor. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“My friend Michelle Minton argues that high tech firms trying to do business in censorious China ought to take their ball and go home in principled protest against the Green Dam Youth Escort program.”
“So people who are concerned about the ongoing pandemic of men's violence against women -- including thousands of domestic violence and sexual assault advocates and educators - are "censorious" if they have a problem with lyrics that normalize and find humor in (fictional) rapists 'misogynist fantasies of brutality and degradation?”
“One was a scathing demolition of James Atlas's biography of Saul Bellow by Richard Poirier, who described it as a 'censorious' and 'condescending' work, fueled by 'craven hostility' toward its subject.”
“Likewise, it should be emphasized here that any attempt to compose a historical picture of the Patriarch and his work cannot be considered correct or proven, at least academically speaking, if it is based on the '' censorious '' texts of the time, which in many ways are irresponsible and historically dubious, and which essentially are nothing but libel.”
“[154] It is sufficient to read the '' censorious '' texts '' against the rebaptizers '' of the eighteenth century that this issue gave rise to.”
“Boing Boing into the kind of censorious monster it normally ridicules?”
“censorious," meaning faultfinding, is derived from the name of these ancient officials.”
“NEW YORK — Author James Purdy, a shocking realist and surprising romantic who in underground classics such as “Cabot Wright Begins” and “Eustace Chisholm and the Works” inspired censorious outrage and lasting admiration, has died.”
March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground
“Except that several comments did in fact bring up campus speech codes, the Harvard email controversy and other such side issues as examples of “the left” and its censorious impulses.”
“Dressing like your Aunt Dahlia DOES NOT mean I am prim, censorious and frigid.”
The Guardian: Are SlutWalkers losing their way? | Victoria Coren
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘censorious’.
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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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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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New Words
idiopathic, quidditas, cloacal, peregrination, cyclamen, expatiate, pedantic, salonniere, manque, pelagic, exogenous, pellucid and 83 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 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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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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practice 2
100 words
momentous, domicile, adroit, ingenious, dexterous, genius, brevity, decorum, propriety, dignity, err, blunder and 91 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
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The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
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The Confidence Man
Words to remember from Melville's "The Confidence Man"
chevalier, hawk, unalloyed, ex-officio, scruple, pertinacity, epithet, gilt, bedizen, embrasure, escritoire, squaw and 278 more...
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hober's Words
anglosphere, wiki, slither, cylon, satchel, faustian, ragamuffin, frak, salient, fervid, tartan, snowclone and 299 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for censorious.

brtom But the world is so censorious, no character escapes.
Sheridan, School for Scandal Jan 6, 2008