Word Confusion: Censor versus Censure

Plural for the noun: censors
Gerund: censoring

Third person present verb: censors
Past tense or past participle: censored
Present participle: censoring

Plural for the noun: censures
Gerund: censuring

Third person present verb: censures
Past tense or past participle: censured
Present participle: censuring

• Any person who supervises the manners or morality of others
• An adverse critic
• A faultfinder

[Ancient Rome] Either of two magistrates who kept the register or census of the citizens, awarded public contracts, and supervised manners and public morals

[Psychoanalysis; early Freudian dream theory] The force [superego] that represses ideas, impulses, and feelings, and prevents them from entering consciousness in their original, undisguised forms ²

Verb, transitive:
Examine (a book, movie, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it ¹

• To delete (a word or passage of text) in one’s capacity as a censor

An official reprimand, as by a legislative body of one of its members

Verb, intransitive:
To give censure, adverse criticism, disapproval, or blame

Verb, transitive:
To criticize or reproach in a harsh or vehement manner

The movie has been given an adults-only rating by film censors.

We had to send the film back to the censors four times.

The goal of Freudian dream interpretation is to undo the work of the censor.

The superego, originating in the child through an identification with parents, and in response to social pressures, functions as an internal censor to repress the urges of the id.

Cato the Censor successfully grew Carthaginian figs in his garden.

The magistracy continued to be controlled by patricians until 351 BC, when Gaius Marcius Rutilus was appointed the first plebeian censor.

Verb, transitive:
The inmates received their mail only after prison officials had censored all the contents.

My mail was being censored.

Free speech in America is now being censored, and those who spoke are censured for it.

Many Middle Eastern countries and China censor Internet access.

“Activists still have to reach the site on their own, escaping efforts to censor or monitor the internet in their home countries” (Rogin).

I do like that Wikipedia is not censored.

They paid the price in social ostracism and family censure.

Two representatives were singled out for censure.

The documents show that the doctor accepted his censure, reprimand, and has paid the fine.

Verb, intransitive:
Some senators considered a resolution of censure to express strong disapproval of the president’s behavior.

Meanwhile he had been recalled to Adelaide and summoned before a Royal Commission where he was censured and criticized.

She is more to be pitied than censured.

Verb, transitive:
However, there is no reason why a human system for judging and formally censuring the behavior of others should be a slave to the vagaries of chance.

Female students were censured for eating apples “too seductively” in public.

The company was heavily censured by inspectors from the Department of Trade.

Shareholders censured the bank for its extravagance.

In recent years, North Yorkshire police were condemned for establishing a canteen culture and county ambulance service chiefs were censured for bullying.

1. 1525–35, from the Latin cēnsor, which is a derivative of cēns(ēre) meaning to give as one’s opinion, recommend, assess.
2. From a mistranslation of the German Zensur meaning censorship, coined by Freud.