To remove or eliminate something unwanted from a text or document, especially immoral or offensive passages.
From Late Latin expurgare (ex- 'thoroughly' + purgare 'to cleanse, purify'). The verb entered English in the 16th century as a term for textual censorship, later becoming more general.
Expurge is the parent verb that spawned expurgator, expurgative, and a whole family of words—yet expurge itself has nearly vanished from English, replaced by the more familiar 'expunge' and 'censor'.
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