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

Bewildered Melville allowed his publishers to expurgate and his present biographer believes the bowdlerization warped his entire career.

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

And with the exception of that expurgated Benchley quote, its advertising eschewed pull quotes, focusing instead on the show’s popularity: “Hundreds have seen ‘Abie’ three times or more.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2022

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

“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

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

Even this lying spirit will be under the necessity to avail himself of this fiery ordeal, and made to rejoice in its expurgating and cleansing efficacy.

From Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations of Antiquity Considering also their Origin and Meaning by T. W. Doane

You might as well think of expurgating a book on geometry!

From A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy by Isaac Husik