October 20, 2005

Censure/Censor Again

Reader Robert Lane Green has pointed to another instance of the erroneous use of censure in place of censor, this one in this New York Times article about the trial of Saddam Hussein.

The television feed from the courtroom, housed in the former Baath Party headquarters, was set up with a 20-minute delay so officials can censure any sensitive images or testimony.
The article is by John F. Burns and Edward Wong, so it doesn't seem likely that the error can be attributed to "bleed through" during translation. There probably wasn't any translation involved, and if there was, it would have been from Arabic, not a European language in which a verb that looks like censure has the meaning of English censor. I'm afraid that it looks like this is an error by the Times reporters or an editor. O tempora, o mores!

Posted by Bill Poser at October 20, 2005 01:14 AM