Censored

How to spell censored

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce censored

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does censored mean?

1. verbSuppressed or removed parts of a text, image, or broadcast that were considered objectionable or sensitive.
2. adjectiveHaving had objectionable or sensitive parts suppressed or removed.

Censored in a sentence

• verb

  The broadcaster censored the violent scenes before the film aired at teatime.

• adjective

  The censored documents arrived with thick black lines over every name.

• verb

  Government officials censored several pages of the classified report.

• adjective

  He could only find a heavily censored version of the film online.

Where does censored come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb censere, which meant 'to assess, to estimate, or to give a considered opinion'. In ancient Rome a censor was a powerful magistrate who not only took the census (counting citizens and their property) but also supervised public morals and could strike a person from the citizen rolls for misconduct. That sense of an official sitting in moral judgement is exactly what travelled into English in the late sixteenth century, when 'censor' came to mean an officer who examines books, plays, or letters and suppresses anything deemed objectionable. The verb form, with the past tense 'censored', describes the act of removing or blocking such material. It is worth remembering that the spelling keeps the agent suffix -or (as in 'censor', one who judges), which is why it is 'censored' and not 'censered'; the look-alike word 'censured', meaning formally reprimanded, comes from the closely related Latin censura but carries a quite different meaning.

How the word is built

• cens- (from Latin censere: to assess, judge)
• -or (agent noun suffix)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)