bowdlerize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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Apparently, to bowdlerize Coco Chanel, elegance really has been refusal.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2018
To bowdlerize Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and Arsenal finishing in the top four.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 26, 2017
The rush to bowdlerize what Biden had said turned a glancing tap of the bruise into a grinding fist.
From Slate ● May 9, 2012
Ives managed to talk 20th Century-Fox out of tampering with The Blue-Tail Fly, though he did have to bowdlerize his other favorite, Foggy, Foggy Dew, an old Irish ballad.
From Time Magazine Archive
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I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words.
From Essays by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell
Yet Brice, knowing all that, still adored him, which makes a far more interesting tale than the bowdlerized one the show offers, of a duped woman finally and regretfully seeing the light.
From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2022
Also, and not incidentally, the river is named for the tribe whose chief’s bowdlerized name became that of the city.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 2, 2020
Charlotte bowdlerized one of Emily’s poems and tried to spin Emily as a primitive in her introduction to the 1850 reissue of her sisters’ novels.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 24, 2016
Huang yelled, frustrated that the show had bowdlerized his story, which included whippings by his father, an immigrant restaurant owner.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 2, 2015
"Mhudi" was published by the missionary press at Lovedale in 1930, in a somewhat bowdlerized version.
From Native Life in South Africa by Sol (Solomon Tshekisho) Plaatje
I also don’t think he was consciously bowdlerizing the song to make it more ‘‘appropriate’’ for me.
From New York Times ● Oct. 14, 2015
When Televisa tried bowdlerizing the footage with a pro-government spin, he destroyed the tape and resigned, effectively blacklisting himself.
From New York Times ● Sep. 25, 2015
All the candidates have taken what was once a very specific ideology and extracted their favorite parts, selectively interpreting the vision and generally bowdlerizing it.
From Washington Post ● May 15, 2015
Note that, in railing against the bowdlerizing of the film's language, Ebert censored himself.
From Time ● Apr. 4, 2011
But despite bowdlerizing content, my family has been entirely faithful about visiting.
From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
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