noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A policy of bowdlerization, or censorship by removing what is considered indecent. countable, uncountable
2. 2
   censorship in the form of prudish expurgation wordnet

Etymology

From Bowdler + -ism.

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