expurgate

We lose a critical piece of our cultural knowledge – and our ability to recognize who we were so we can actually change – when we expurgate anything tricky or objectionable from the record.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 11, 2018

In fact, there had been nothing to expurgate.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 29, 2014

In some cases it might also be a paranoia that they want to expurgate in some way.”

From New York Times ● Jan. 27, 2012

An asterisk indicated books in purgatory, redeemable if their sinner-authors would expurgate.

From Time Magazine Archive

Every time one of his children made a sound that was recognizably southern, Bull would expurgate that sound from his child’s tongue on the spot.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

Only an expurgated 500-page executive summary has been made public.

From Salon ● Nov. 13, 2019

As Marina Warner wrote in her book Stranger Magic, “Galland transformed his sources, his fluent prose adding politesse and polish. … He expurgated the eroticism that heightens many passages in the original.”

From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2019

The book, which is available as a limited-edition, two-volume box set and a combined, expurgated third version that merges the two as a double-fronted volume, is split into complimentary themes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 12, 2018

“To consent would be an admission that the expurgated parts are not indispensable,” he wrote.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 10, 2018

I agreed to go, as I’d heard the players were doing Feltemi’s original and not one of the expurgated versions.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

There was no question of expurgating particular passages.

From Time Magazine Archive

Yossarian was busy expurgating all but romance words from the letters when the chaplain sat down in a chair between the beds and asked him how he was feeling.

From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

This is called "expurgating" the book; but people who disapprove often call it to bowdlerize.

From Stories That Words Tell Us by Elizabeth (Elizabeth Speakman) O'Neill

He became his own diligent self, amassing grain and gold and zealously expurgating for reproduction in bleak chapels that winter a volume of sermons by an Anglican bishop.

From Carnival by Compton MacKenzie

"Happily for historic truth," says Mr. Tylor, "mythic tradition tells its tales without expurgating the episodes which betray its real character to more critical observation."

From Moon Lore by Timothy Harley