Bowdlerization

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The action or instance of bowdlerizing; the omission or removal of material considered vulgar or indecent. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of bowdlerization. alt-of, countable, uncountable

    "We have had adaptations of Dickens and Scott, and even George Eliot, for children, and Bowdlerizations of the Arabian Nights and the popular fairy tales."

  3. 3
    the act of deleting or modifying all passages considered to be indecent wordnet
  4. 4
    written material that has been bowdlerized wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
abbreviationabridgmentbowdlerisationcancellationcatharsiscensorship

Example

More examples

"We have had adaptations of Dickens and Scott, and even George Eliot, for children, and Bowdlerizations of the Arabian Nights and the popular fairy tales."

Etymology

From bowdlerize + -ation.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.