bowdlerize v.

"expurgate by eliminating indelicate or offensive passages," 1836, from the name of Thomas Bowdler, English editor who in 1818 published a notorious expurgated Shakespeare, in which, according to his frontispiece, "nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." Related: Bowdlerized; bowdlerizing; bowdlerization.