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''bowdlerize'' ▫ᴱᴺ

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''bowdlerize'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

bowdlerize - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

bowdlerize (third-person singular simple present bowdlerizes, present participle bowdlerizing, simple past and past participle bowdlerized)

  • (transitive) 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 the balcony and ‘My Romeo!’”/“[William] Shakespeare is altogether different from the modern stuff. Altogether different. I’m not discussing Shakespeare. I don’t want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare. […]”1
    • ✤ “Wadley sent a message: ‘The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honour to come to their next meeting.’ The answer was unprintable."
      "You don’t say?"
      "Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: ‘Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favour if he would go to the devil.’”      2
    • ✤ His critics take alarm only when it becomes apparent that he would bowdlerize Homer and exclude from his state the great tragedians.3
    • ✤ Let me tell you about Madicken. (Mardie in English. Or Meg, but that’s in the American translation and that’s bowdlerized and you should never read it.)4

Etymology

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.”

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈbaʊd.ləˌɹaɪz/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈbaʊd.ləɹˌaɪz/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 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, →OCLC, § 6, page 26: ↩

  2. 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, “‘Try your Luck with Professor Challenger’”, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC, pages 23–24: ↩

  3. 1961, J. A. Philip, “Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato,”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, volume 92, page 455: ↩

  4. 2014 January 7, Market Chipping, “Why you should read the Madicken (Mardie) books”, in Market Chipping (blog), retrieved 8 March 2016: ↩

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