censor

CEFRC1

/ˈsɛnsə/

verb · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    verb

    To remove parts of a book, film, or message considered unacceptable.

  2. 02

    noun

    A person who examines material and removes unacceptable parts.

Examples

  • I wonder which country will be the first to censor Tatoeba.

  • It'd be very convenient if we could censor this kind of comment.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meanings

  1. A high-ranking official who was responsible for the supervision of subordinate government officials.

  2. An official responsible for the removal or suppression of objectionable material (for example, if obscene or likely to incite violence) or sensitive content in books, films, correspondence, and other media.

noun

Extra meaning

  1. One of the two magistrates who originally administered the census of citizens, and by Classical times (between the 8th century B.C.E. and the 6th century C.E.) was a high judge of public behaviour and morality.

More examples

In context

  • I tried using a dirty word as my user name for the online game, but the censor rejected it.

  • The Ancient Roman censors were part of the cursus honorum, a series of public offices held during a political career, like consuls and praetors.

  • The headmaster was an even stricter censor of his boarding pupils’ correspondence than the enemy censors had been of his own when the country was occupied.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The government tried to blank all negative news reports to control public opinion.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

verb

The noun is borrowed from Latin cēnsor (“magistrate; critic”), from cēnseō (“to give an opinion, judge; to assess, reckon; to decree, determine”) + -sor (variant of -tor (suffix forming masculine agent nouns)). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱens- (“to announce, proclaim; to put in order”). The English word is cognate with Late Middle English sensour, Proto-Iranian *cánhati (“to declare; to explain”), Sanskrit शंसति (śaṃsati, “to declare”). The verb is derived from the noun.