censorious
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- anticensorious adjective
- anticensoriously adverb
- anticensoriousness noun
- censoriously adverb
- censoriousness noun
- noncensorious adjective
- noncensoriously adverb
- noncensoriousness noun
- overcensorious adjective
- overcensoriously adverb
- overcensoriousness noun
- uncensorious adjective
- uncensoriously adverb
- uncensoriousness noun
Etymology
Origin of censorious
1530–40; < Latin cēnsōrius of a censor, hence, austere, moral; censor, -tory 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
We are seeing a censorious instinct bubbling up in politicians alarmed by these developments.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 4, 2026
Even after her mother’s death in 2020 at 96, that censorious voice remained “embedded in my most primitive responses, in my very limbic system.”
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 17, 2025
He distorted emails and other exchanges to make them look coercive when they were nothing of the sort, cherry-picking and rearranging quotations to put them in a censorious light.
From Slate • Mar. 18, 2024
"We cannot stress enough how these censorious efforts will not end with book bans," the open letter states.
From Salon • Sep. 21, 2023
How can it be explained, not only to the loved ones left behind, but to a censorious public?
From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
