expurgator

1. 1.

   a person who edits a text by removing obscene or offensive words or passages

   “Thomas Bowdler was a famous expurgator”

   Synonymsbowdlerizerbowdleriser

   Broadereditor

Other forms of expurgator

plural

expurgators·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about expurgator

What does expurgator mean?

expurgator means "a person who edits a text by removing obscene or offensive words or passages".

How many syllables are in expurgator?

expurgator has 4 syllables: ex-pur-ga-tor. The stress falls on "pur".

What is another word for expurgator?

Close synonyms include bowdlerizer, bowdleriser. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is expurgator a common word?

expurgator is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.