bowdlerize

verb

Etymology: From Bowdler + -ize; named after English physician Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825). In 1818, he published a censored version of William Shakespeare (The Family Shakespeare), expurgating “those words and expressions […] which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”

1. To remove or alter those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly.

   “The bowdlerized version of the novel, while free of vulgarity, was also free of flavor.”

   “Mr. Stanley decided to treat that as irrelevant. "There ought to be a Censorship of Books.[…]" / Ogilvy pursued his own topic. "I'm inclined to think, Stanley, myself that as a matter of fact it was the expurgated Romeo and Juliet did the mischief. […] All they left it was the moon and stars. And the balcony and 'My Romeo!'" / "[William] Shakespeare is altogether different from the modern stuff. Altogether different. I'm not discussing Shakespeare. I don't want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare.[…]"”