bowdlerize
verb
ˈbau̇d-
Did you know?
In 1807, a new edition of the works of William Shakespeare hit the scene in England. Titled The Family Shakespeare, the collection of 20 of the Bard's plays in four volumes was at first anonymously edited, and promised in its preface to "remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious or virtuous mind." Though the sanitized project later became a public sensation (and a source of literary derision) after its expanded, ten-volume second edition was published in 1818 and credited solely to physician Thomas Bowdler, the original expurgation was in fact the work of his older sister Henrietta Maria "Harriet" Bowdler, an accomplished editor and author. Within a year of the younger Bowdler’s death in 1825, bowdlerize had come to refer to cutting out the dirty bits of other books and texts—testimony not only to the impact of his eye for impropriety, but to those of his sister Harriet as well, though her efforts were obscured by history, if not technically bowdlerized.
Examples of bowdlerize in a Sentence
James Reston Jr., Star Tribune, 29 Mar. 2021
The mobs of students — and their enabling professors and administrators — renaming buildings and bowdlerizing the language are still products of Western civilization.
—Jonah Goldberg, Alaska Dispatch News, 28 Aug. 2017
The Bard gets bowdlerized to musical and comic effect in this touring production of the Broadway hit, in which the Bottom Brothers try to outdo that dude from Stratford-upon-Avon.
—Kerry Reid, chicagotribune.com, 25 May 2017
Maybe there’s a kind of metaphor in there, about how young and spiky verve gets softened and bowdlerized by time spent in the world.
—Richard Lawson, VanityFair.com, 17 Apr. 2017
Prince the raunchy sylph eventually became a Jehovah’s Witness who would bowdlerize his more explicit material in concert.
—John Williams, New York Times, 11 Apr. 2017
Cite this Entry
“Bowdlerize.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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