comstockery
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Censorship of literature and performances because of especially broad definitions of obscenity or immorality.
American usage; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "1905, George Bernard Shaw, letter, New York Times, Sept. 26, 1905, Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States."
- "1916, H. L. Mencken, column, Baltimore Evening Sun, July, 19, 1916, A people unconvinced of the pervasiveness of sin, the supreme importance of moral problems, the need of harsh and inquisitorial laws--in brief, of the whole Puritan theological and political apparatus--would never have permitted the growth of such curious flowers as Comstockery, so obnoxious and so incomprehensible to all foreigners."
- "Yet while chiding extreme libertarianism, [David] Selbourne veers dangerously close to Comstockery in his tsk-tsking of noise that “masquerades as music,” gender fluidity, sperm banks, bad grammar, video plagiarists and other presumed vices."
Etymology
Usage
- American usage
- Uncountable