PopVocab: “Expurgate” in Monty Python

by Jen Dziura Jan 12, 2011

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCM2nEBE0RY

This classic Monty Python sketch, “Bookshop,” contains a memorable use of the word expurgate, which means “to censor, to remove morally offensive passages.”

The funny part — if you haven’t heard or seen the sketch before — is that the customer in the bookshop wants an expurgated version of a book that no one would normally find the need to censor: Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds. (He dislikes a particular bird — they have “long, nasty beaks”).

There are a few other GRE words relating to censoring or shortening:

Redact – Revise or edit; draw up or frame. This word is sometimes used euphemistically to refer to censorship, as in the title of the 2007 film Redacted.

Abridge – “To shorten by omissions while retaining the basic contents,” as is frequently done when adapting a book to audiobook format.

Truncate – “to shorten by cutting off a part; cut short”

And, of course, don’t get censor mixed up with censure, which means to disapprove, especially formally.