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{{trope}}
 
== [[The Bible]] ==
* During Prohibition, there was a move to edit ''[[The Bible]]'' to remove ''all'' references to alcohol. Except, of course, the ones that discouraged overindulgence.
** Yes, they literally wanted [[Jesus]] to turn water into grape juice.
*** The strangest part of this is that the bowdlerizers reasoned that the translation must be wrong, since Jesus would never drink alcohol. This even though most of them were old enough to remember a time when it was ''necessary'' to drink fermented beverages because they wouldn't be infected by dangerous bacteria like plain water was. (And without modern sanitation and refrigeration, you simply can't keep freshly pressed grape juice from fermenting. Grape skins are coated in yeast.)
**** There are individuals who '''to this day''' maintain that when Jesus refuses ''οἶνος'' mixed with myrrh, or when Paul commands that a deacon be not given to ''οἶνος'', the word ''οἶνος'' means "wine"; but when Jesus changes water into ''οἶνος'', or when Paul (only two chapters after the previous reference) tells his friend Titus to avoid drinking water but use a little ''οἶνος'' for his stomach's sake, the word ''οἶνος'' means "unfermented grape juice".
** In the King James Version, the first of which being in the sixteenth century, the translators deliberately replaced the tetragrammaton, four Hebrew letters frequently translated to either YHWH (Yahweh) or JHVH (Jehovah), with the all capital, LORD. In the foreword for some translations the reason is given that, after the second century, the spoken name of God was bad luck. Which gives us the reason why no one can agree on the true translation.
*** Replacing God's name with a word meaning "Lord" is much older than KJV; the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate did the same thing ("Kyrios" and "Dominus", respectively). And so did (and still do) the Jews (replacing it with "Adonai"); the God's name was considered so sacred that only the High Priest was allowed to say it. ("Jehovah" is believed to have originated by combining the consonants of God's name with the vowels of "Adonai"; "Yahweh" is a modern reconstruction of the pronunciation.)
** The Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, is perhaps the raciest book in [[The Bible]]. However, even this version may have been [[Bowdlerized]] from the original, For instance, in the selection where the lover describes his beloved, he says her waist is like a heap of wheat. Given that this breaks the order of the narrative, many Biblical scholars believe that the original translation referred to a different part of the female anatomy.
** And there was an interesting variation on removing certain parts of the Bible: the [[wikipedia:Wicked Bible|Wicked Bible]]. Said word was "not", which gave us the awesome seventh commandment: "Thou shalt commit adultery." Sure, they claimed it was an accident, but [[Viewers Are Horny|given the subject matter]]...
 
* [[Terry Pratchett]] canceled plans for a movie of ''[[Discworld/Mort|Mort]]'' when the producers told him they loved the story (about {{smallcaps| [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Death]]}} taking an apprentice) but wanted to lose the "Death" angle.▼
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
▲* [[Terry Pratchett]] canceledcancelled plans for a movie of ''[[Discworld/Mort|Mort]]'' when the producers told him they loved the story (about {{smallcapssmall-caps| [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Death]]}} taking an apprentice) but wanted to lose the "Death" angle.
** That makes me die a little inside.
*** {{smallcapssmall-caps|Right this way, then.}}
** From what I know, the company which did that was most likely Disney. Go figure.
** in ''[[Discworld/Feet of Clay (novel)|Feet of Clay]]'' actually uses the word; a common dwarfish saying in regards to height is "All trees are felled at ground level.", it is mentioned that this is merely an extremely bowdlerised version of the actual saying, which is "When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth"▼
* More [[Terry Pratchett]] examples:
** In ''[[Hogfather]]'', a choir sings "the red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day". A footnote explains that while it's usually not hens that would crow at dawn, a woman had thought that the original would offend listeners of a certain disposition and had rewritten it.▼
▲** in ''[[Discworld/Feet of Clay|Feet of Clay]]'' actually uses the word; a common dwarfish saying in regards to height is "All trees are felled at ground level.", it is mentioned that this is merely an extremely bowdlerised version of the actual saying, which is "When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth"
 
▲** In ''Hogfather'', a choir sings "the red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day". A footnote explains that while it's usually not hens that would crow at dawn, a woman had thought that the original would offend listeners of a certain disposition and had rewritten it.
== Other works ==
* There exists a condensed, 'kid-friendly' pop-up book version of ''[[Gulliver's Travels|Gulliver In Lilliput]]''.
** In fact, ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' is frequently censored due to the rather explicit material found throughout the different parts -- such as Gulliver's account of how the Brobdinagian women would ''use him as a dildo''. Which admittedly does sound rather Squicky.
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* Children's book [[Pastiche]] ''[[Go the Fuck to Sleep]]'' proved popular enough to get an alternate, actually child-friendly version called ''Seriously Go To Sleep''.
 
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[[Category:Bowdlerise]]
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