Definitions

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

  • noun Censorship, especially in the arts, on the basis of perceived immorality or obscenity.

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

  • noun censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality

Etymologies

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

[After Anthony Comstock.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Comstockery.

Examples

  • Be it understood that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded

    Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 Various 1904

  • Comstockery, George Bernard Shaw, I see you smiling.

    Crystal Syben Haidl: The Morning After--America's Most Underappreciated Anniversaries for Money, Sex and Song 2008

  • And Rudy, shocked down to his adulterous Underoos, went off on a rampaging fit of Comstockery that made even ardent supporters think he was an overreaching jerkbag.

    December 2006 2006

  • Efforts to impose gag rules on doctors, punitive measures designed to make it harder for women to get access to information and services relating to contraception and abortion, laws that would allow the Anthony Comstocks of today to arrest and jail doctors who perform an abortion procedure that in their medical judgment is the safest to preserve the health and future fertility of their patients -- all this is the Comstockery of today.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • This Congress, therefore, revived Comstockery by making it a crime to use the Internet to provide or receive information which directly or indirectly tells where, how, of whom, or by what means an abortion may be obtained.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • Comstockery has been given a new lease on life by this Congress.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • George Bernard Shaw assessed this terrible series of events in 1905, saying, Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • Every imaginable form of Comstockery is represented in this array of antichoice measures.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • So Comstockery remains alive and well, and until the Congress is motivated to renounce Comstockery once and for all, I fear that women will pay a disproportionate share of the price, with the dark shadow of Anthony Comstock hanging over our health-related speech on critical topics such as abortion.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

  • ` Comstockery, 'because I think we have to acknowledge that elements of Comstockery are all too present today.

    Comstock Act Still On The Books 1996

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.