censorious

adjective

cen·​so·​ri·​ous sen-ˈsȯr-ē-əs How to pronounce censorious (audio)
: marked by or given to censure (see censure entry 1 sense 2)
censorious comments
a censorious critic
censoriously adverb
censoriousness noun
Choose the Right Synonym for censorious

critical, hypercritical, faultfinding, captious, carping, censorious mean inclined to look for and point out faults and defects.

critical may also imply an effort to see a thing clearly and truly in order to judge it fairly.

a critical essay

hypercritical suggests a tendency to judge by unreasonably strict standards.

hypercritical disparagement of other people's work

faultfinding implies a querulous or exacting temperament.

a faultfinding reviewer

captious suggests a readiness to detect trivial faults or raise objections on trivial grounds.

a captious critic

carping implies an ill-natured or perverse picking of flaws.

a carping editorial

censorious implies a disposition to be severely critical and condemnatory.

the censorious tone of the review

Examples of censorious in a Sentence

The stunt earned her the scorn of her censorious older sister. I was surprised by the censorious tone of the book review.
Recent Examples on the Web Some of the same censorious actors prominent as Opie was shooting her landmark photograph a generation ago are still at work today; in January alone, more than 275 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in statehouses across the country. Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 31 Jan. 2024 The question is whether the Harvard Corporation that chose her and presided over this debacle will rebalance by installing an educator who isn’t afraid to challenge the school’s dominant and censorious progressive factions. The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Jan. 2024 If this even needs to be said, the censorious attitudes of today do not apply equally to all types and directions of research. Wilfred Reilly, National Review, 29 Dec. 2023 But its playfulness spares it from being merely censorious. Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2023 With the censorious French regime growing increasingly hostile to socialist movements, Cabet saw his opportunity in the vast open lands of the United States. John Last, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Nov. 2023 Drug-overdose deaths are surging; reports of theft on downtown streets, including an almost two-hundred-per-cent increase in car break-ins in 2021, have crossed the national media to censorious response. Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023 That man died in 1915, leaving behind less a legacy and more a joke in the periodic usage of the term Comstockery to denote censorious impulses. Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic, 27 Sep. 2023 The writer Matt Yglesias posted an article from El País about how Twitter, during Elon Musk’s tenure as its C.E.O., has complied with an alarmingly high number of censorious takedown requests from authoritarian governments. Clare Malone, The New Yorker, 13 June 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'censorious.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin cēnsōrius "of a censor, severe," derivative of cēnsor censor entry 1

First Known Use

1536, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of censorious was in 1536

Dictionary Entries Near censorious

Cite this Entry

“Censorious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorious. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on censorious

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!