Meaning
To censor or expurgate a text by removing or rewriting material judged indecent, offensive, or otherwise unsuitable; by extension, to weaken or distort any work through over-cautious editing. The verb is literary and almost always disapproving, implying that the cuts sanitize rather than improve, and it remains common in debates over adapted classics and school reading lists. Formal, bookish, and strongly disapproving; it almost always implies that the editing went too far. Regional use: General English (eponym; source edition 1818).
Origin
An eponym of the English editor Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825). In 1818 he published a ten-volume Family Shakespeare that cut or softened indelicate passages so the plays could, as he put it, be read aloud in a family; the project's anonymous 1807 first edition is now credited to his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler. The verb followed soon after his death: Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to 1826, while Etymonline records it from 1836, so within a generation the family name had become a byword for prudish expurgation. The sense later broadened from cutting bawdy material to any heavy-handed abridging or distorting of a work.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bowdlerise (British)
- bowdlerization
- bowdlerized
- bowdlerizing
Usage Examples
- Publishers who bowdlerize the novel for classrooms trade historical accuracy for comfort.
- The televised version bowdlerized the stand-up routine until almost no jokes survived.
- Rather than bowdlerize the memoir, the editor added context notes for younger readers.