英语词汇bowdlerize的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

bowdlerize. His inability to stand the sight of human blood and suffering forced Dr. Thomas Bowdler to abandon his medical practice in London, but this weakness apparently did not apply where vendors of words were concerned. Bowdler so thoroughly purged both Shakespeare and Gibbon that they would have screamed in pain from the bloodletting had they been alive—to bowdlerize became a synonym for “to radically expurgate or prudishly censor.” Thomas Bowdler, the most re- nowned of self-appointed literary censors, was born at Ashley, near Bath, England on July 11, 1754. After he retired from medicine, a considerable inheritance enabled him to travel about Europe, where he wrote accounts of the Grand Tour that seem to have offended or pleased no one. Though he came from a religious family, Bowdler never earned the “Rev- erend Doctor” title often applied to him, and his early years are conspicuous for the lack of any real accomplishments, un- less one counts membership in organizations like the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Only when he was middle-aged did he retire to the Isle of Wight and begin to sharpen his rusty scalpel on the Bard of Avon’s bones. His Family Shake- speare was finally published in 1818. In justifying this 10- volume edition, Bowdler explained on the title page that “nothing is added to the text; but those expressions are omit- ted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family,” adding later that he had also expunged “Whatever is unfit to be read by a gentleman in a company of ladies.” He would probably have turned his scalpel to other great authors if death had not excised him in 1825. About 10 years later Bow- dler’s name was first used as a verb, the official definition then being “to expurgate by omitting or modifying words or pas- sages considered indelicate or offensive.” Today the word means “prudish, ridiculous censorship.”

词汇	bowdlerize
词源	bowdlerize. His inability to stand the sight of human blood and suffering forced Dr. Thomas Bowdler to abandon his medical practice in London, but this weakness apparently did not apply where vendors of words were concerned. Bowdler so thoroughly purged both Shakespeare and Gibbon that they would have screamed in pain from the bloodletting had they been alive—to bowdlerize became a synonym for “to radically expurgate or prudishly censor.” Thomas Bowdler, the most re- nowned of self-appointed literary censors, was born at Ashley, near Bath, England on July 11, 1754. After he retired from medicine, a considerable inheritance enabled him to travel about Europe, where he wrote accounts of the Grand Tour that seem to have offended or pleased no one. Though he came from a religious family, Bowdler never earned the “Rev- erend Doctor” title often applied to him, and his early years are conspicuous for the lack of any real accomplishments, un- less one counts membership in organizations like the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Only when he was middle-aged did he retire to the Isle of Wight and begin to sharpen his rusty scalpel on the Bard of Avon’s bones. His Family Shake- speare was finally published in 1818. In justifying this 10- volume edition, Bowdler explained on the title page that “nothing is added to the text; but those expressions are omit- ted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family,” adding later that he had also expunged “Whatever is unfit to be read by a gentleman in a company of ladies.” He would probably have turned his scalpel to other great authors if death had not excised him in 1825. About 10 years later Bow- dler’s name was first used as a verb, the official definition then being “to expurgate by omitting or modifying words or pas- sages considered indelicate or offensive.” Today the word means “prudish, ridiculous censorship.”
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