bowdlerize
UK/ˈbaʊd.ləˌɹaɪz//ˈbaʊd.ləɹˌaɪz/
bowdlerize verb: to remove or alter those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly.
Verb (1)
bowdlerize (third-person singular simple present bowdlerizes, present participle bowdlerizing, simple past and past participle bowdlerized)
- To remove or alter those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly.
- The bowdlerized version of the novel, while free of vulgarity, was also free of flavor.
- Mr. Stanley decided to treat that as irrelevant. "There ought to be a Censorship of Books.[…]" / Ogilvy pursued his own topic. "I'm inclined to think, Stanley, myself that as a matter of fact it was the expurgated Romeo and Juliet did the mischief. […] All they left it was the moon and stars. And...1909 October, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Ann Veronica Talks to Her Father”, in Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published 1909...
Verb (2) capitalized: Bowdlerize
Bowdlerize (third-person singular simple present Bowdlerizes, present participle Bowdlerizing, simple past and past participle Bowdlerized)
- Alternative form of bowdlerize.
Examples of bowdlerize in a sentence
- I don't want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare.[…]"1909 October, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Ann Veronica Talks to Her Father”, in Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story, 1st American edition, New...
- His critics take alarm only when it becomes apparent that he would bowdlerize Homer and exclude from his state the great tragedians.1961, J. A. Philip, “Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato,”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, volume...
- Or Meg, but that’s in the American translation and that’s bowdlerized and you should never read it.)2014 January 7, Market Chipping, “Why you should read the Madicken (Mardie) books”, in Market Chipping (blog), retrieved 08 Mar 2016:
Forms of bowdlerize
| third-person singular present | bowdlerizes |
|---|---|
| present participle | bowdlerizing |
| past participle | bowdlerized |
| past | bowdlerized |
| alternative form | Bowdlerize |
| alternative form | bowdlerise |
| alternative form | Bowdlerise |
| third-person singular present | Bowdlerizes |
| present participle | Bowdlerizing |
| past participle | Bowdlerized |
| past | Bowdlerized |
Origin of bowdlerize
From Bowdler + -ize; named after English physician Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825). In 1818, he published a censored version of William Shakespeare (The Family Shakespeare), expurgating “those words and expressions […] which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”
Words formed from bowdlerize
Questions about bowdlerize
- What does bowdlerize mean?
- Bowdlerize means to remove or alter those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly.
- How do you use bowdlerize in a sentence?
- I don't want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare.[…]"
- What part of speech is bowdlerize?
- Bowdlerize is a verb.
- How do you pronounce bowdlerize?
- Bowdlerize is pronounced /ˈbaʊd.ləˌɹaɪz/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of bowdlerize?
- The past tense of bowdlerize is bowdlerized.
Words near bowdlerize in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bowdlerize (page history and authors); Bowdlerize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bowdlerize.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bowdlerize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowdlerize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.