censorship

American  

[sen-ser-ship] / ˈsɛn sərˌʃɪp /

noun

1. the act or practice of censoring.

2. the office or power of a censor.

3. the time during which a censor holds office.

4. the inhibiting and distorting activity of the Freudian censor.

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censorship British  

/ ˈsɛnsəˌʃɪp /

noun

1. a policy or programme of censoring

2. the act or system of censoring

3. psychoanal the activity of the mind in regulating impulses, etc, from the unconscious so that they are modified before reaching the conscious mind

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Other Word Forms

• anticensorship adjective
• precensorship noun
• procensorship adjective
• self-censorship noun

Etymology

Origin of censorship

First recorded in 1585–95; censor + -ship

Explanation

Censorship blocks something from being read, heard, or seen. If you've ever heard the sound of bleeping when someone is speaking on television, that's censorship. To "censor" is to review something and to choose to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene word or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things — or possibly re-wording them — depending on who is listening.

Example Sentences

The response from app designers could be swift and dramatic: Think universal TikTok-style censorship and aughts-era chronological scroll, experts said.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 28, 2026

NordVPN also offers obfuscated servers to bypass censorship, Double VPN for routing traffic through two encrypted servers and Onion over VPN for Tor-like anonymity.

From Salon • Mar. 27, 2026

Kevin Hall, a leading nutrition scientist who carried out prominent research on the links between ultraprocessed foods and health, left his job at the National Institutes of Health last year, citing censorship concerns.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 23, 2026

Like many, she and her sister have a two-way exchange, the person inside Iran passing on family messages and the one abroad giving updates about the war not available in Iran due to government censorship.

From BBC • Mar. 15, 2026

During the years that I stayed in the Norfolk Prison Colony, never did any official directly say anything to me about those letters, although, of course, they all passed through the prison censorship.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

Related Words

• ban
• blackout
• restriction
• suppression