bowdlerize
To remove or alter those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly.
transitive
The bowdlerized version of the novel, while free of vulgarity, was also free of flavor.
Where it comes from
From Bowdler + -ize; named after English physician Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825). In 1818, he published a censored version of William Shakespeare (The Family Shakespeare), expurgating “those words and expressions […] which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry bowdlerize (CC BY-SA 4.0).