Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Tending to censure; critical.
  • adjective Expressing censure.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Addicted to censure; apt to blame or condemn; severe in commenting on others or on their actions, manners, writings, etc.; captious; carping: as, a censorious critic.
  • Implying or expressing censure: as, censorious remarks.
  • Synonyms Hypercritical, faultfinding, carping, captious.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Addicted to censure; apt to blame or condemn; severe in making remarks on others, or on their writings or manners.
  • adjective Implying or expressing censure.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Addicted to censure and scolding; apt to blame or condemn; severe in making remarks on others, or on their writings or manners.
  • adjective Implying or expressing censure.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective harshly critical or expressing censure

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin cēnsōrius, of a censor, from cēnsor, Roman censor; see censor.]

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Examples

  • My friend Michelle Minton argues that high tech firms trying to do business in censorious China ought to take their ball and go home in principled protest against the Green Dam Youth Escort program.

    Only Nextel Could Go to China 2009

  • So people who are concerned about the ongoing pandemic of men's violence against women -- including thousands of domestic violence and sexual assault advocates and educators - are "censorious" if they have a problem with lyrics that normalize and find humor in (fictional) rapists 'misogynist fantasies of brutality and degradation?

    Jackson Katz: Eminem, Misogyny, and the Sounds of Silence 2009

  • One was a scathing demolition of James Atlas's biography of Saul Bellow by Richard Poirier, who described it as a 'censorious' and 'condescending' work, fueled by 'craven hostility' toward its subject.

    Tracking the Untrackable Lee, Hermione 2001

  • Likewise, it should be emphasized here that any attempt to compose a historical picture of the Patriarch and his work cannot be considered correct or proven, at least academically speaking, if it is based on the '' censorious '' texts of the time, which in many ways are irresponsible and historically dubious, and which essentially are nothing but libel.

    orrologion 2009

  • [154] It is sufficient to read the '' censorious '' texts '' against the rebaptizers '' of the eighteenth century that this issue gave rise to.

    orrologion 2009

  • Boing Boing into the kind of censorious monster it normally ridicules?

    Gawker 2009

  • "censorious," meaning faultfinding, is derived from the name of these ancient officials.

    Early European History Hutton Webster

  • NEW YORK — Author James Purdy, a shocking realist and surprising romantic who in underground classics such as “Cabot Wright Begins” and “Eustace Chisholm and the Works” inspired censorious outrage and lasting admiration, has died.

    March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

  • Except that several comments did in fact bring up campus speech codes, the Harvard email controversy and other such side issues as examples of “the left” and its censorious impulses.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Street Preacher Arrested in England for Public Statements That Homosexuality is a Sin 2010

  • Dressing like your Aunt Dahlia DOES NOT mean I am prim, censorious and frigid.

    Are SlutWalkers losing their way? | Victoria Coren 2011

Comments

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  • But the world is so censorious, no character escapes.

    Sheridan, School for Scandal

    January 6, 2008