Censor

How to spell censor

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce censor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does censor mean?

1. verbTo examine material and suppress or remove parts considered objectionable or sensitive.
2. nounAn official who examines books, films, letters, or other material and suppresses unacceptable parts.

Censor in a sentence

• verb

  The government tried to censor any reporting on the protests.

• noun

  The wartime censor blacked out any mention of troop movements.

• verb

  The prison authorities censor outgoing letters for security reasons.

• noun

  A film censor reviewed the footage before it reached cinemas.

Where does censor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin censor, the title of a Roman magistrate whose duties included taking the census, counting citizens, and supervising public morals. That title was built on the verb censere, which meant 'to assess, to appraise, or to give an opinion', so a censor was literally someone who judged and registered people and their conduct. English adopted the word in the 1500s, first for the Roman office and then for any official empowered to examine books, plays, or letters and to suppress material deemed objectionable. The verb sense, meaning to remove or ban parts of a text, grew out of that official role and became especially common in wartime and in publishing. The same censere root also gives us 'census' and the more disapproving 'censure', and the shared origin is exactly why censor is so easily confused with censure, the verb meaning to formally rebuke.

How the word is built

• cens- (from Latin censere: to assess, judge)
• -or (agent noun suffix)

Words that sound like censor

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• sensor: A device that detects a physical input such as light, heat, motion or pressure and converts it into a measurable signal.