Hello Agora readers,

      Here is a somewhat illusive word which most of you have probably heard before at some time but never gave it much thought. I didn’t either until it turned up in an interesting article in a journal called "Anatolian Studies" about the first British archeological trips to Turkey in the early 19th century by J.M. Wagstaff:
     Wagstaff writes:

     "When {Colonel} Leake visited Asia Minor {1799-1800} the ancient place names were almost forgotten or BOWDLERIZED almost out of recognition."

     (Please see   "Istanbul" on this site to which many of you have contributed).

     The word also means to expurgate or remove anything undesirable in a work of litterature like a play, a story, a novel etc. Some historians and Biblical scholars claim that even the Bible has been  ‘Bowdlerized’ from time to time. In other words, the ‘bowdlerize’  is synonymous with ‘edit’ and ‘censure’ in some contexts.

   
      Dictionary. Com: gives two definitions of the word:

     1) To expurgate (a book, for example) prudishly.

     2)To modify, as by shortening or simplifying or by skewing the content in a certain manner.

    The second definition seems to apply to the J.M. Wagstaff article.

    If anyone has anything to add please feel free.

    Sincerely,

    Brian  :)
   

    Dictionary.Com goes on to give the interesting history of the word in a nutshell::

   Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare in 1818.]