expurgatorial

[ ik-spur-guh-tawr-ee-uhl, -tohr- ]

adjective

1. pertaining to an expurgator or to expurgation.

Word History and Origins

Origin of expurgatorial¹

First recorded in 1800–10; expurgator(y) + -ial

Example Sentences

But why go on with this expurgatorial catalogue?

From Project Gutenberg

“Chaque pays a ses coutumes,” said he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of d�lits and the instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index.

From Project Gutenberg

Or, secondly and lastly, tracts, treatises, essays; pandects, codes, institutes; primers, rosaries, romances; travels, synods, history books; digests, decretals, lives; commentaries anagogical, allegorical, or tropological; journals, expositions, vocabularies, pilgrimages, manuals, indexes common or expurgatorial; almanacks, bulls, constitutions, or lottery books, viz. i. e. namely, to wit, or, that is to say, FINIS.

From Project Gutenberg

Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new Expurgatorial Divine, Her final effulgent Avatar, Postured outside a trampling mastodon Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged With blood of traitors.

From Project Gutenberg

When we remember that the greatest works of literature, such as the Divine Comedy, were tampered with, and that, in the Spanish Expurgatorial Index of 1640 the list of passages to be deleted or to be altered in Erasmus's works takes 59 double-columned, closely printed folio pages, we can easily see the point of Milton's indignant protest.

From Project Gutenberg