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# The BFD Word of the Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/the-bfd-word-of-the-day-1227/
- Published: 2023-06-09T18:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-04-14T18:56:26.000Z
- Author: David Theobald
- Tags: General, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-16 22:22

The word for today is…

bowdlerise (verb):

1 *literature* : to expurgate (something, such as a book) by omitting or modifying parts considered vulgar

2: to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content

Source : [Merriam -Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize?ref=goodoil.news)

Etymology : Few editors have achieved the notoriety of Thomas Bowdler. He was trained as a physician, but when illness prevented him from practicing medicine, he turned to warning Europeans about unsanitary conditions at French watering places. Bowdler then carried his quest for purification to literature, and in 1818 he published his Family Shakspeare \[sic\], a work in which he promised that “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” The sanitized volume was popular with the public of the day, but literary critics denounced his modifications of the words of the Bard. Bowdler applied his literary eraser broadly, and within 11 years of his death in 1825 the word bowdlerise was being used to refer to expurgating books or other texts.

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