The American spelling of the noun form; the act or process of removing supposedly offensive or indecent content from a text or work.
From 'bowdlerize' plus the suffix '-ation,' which creates nouns from verbs and is more common in American English than '-isation'.
The concept of bowdlerization shows how censorship changes over time—what Bowdler removed as 'indecent' in 1800 would be completely acceptable to modern readers, proving that offense is culturally relative.
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