[see -SHIP.]
1. The office of a Roman censor (or its period).
1600. Holland, Livy, VII. 264 (R.). To stand for a Censorship.
1869. Rawlinson, Anc. Hist., 361. The dignity of the censorship was indeed lessened by the Æmilian law.
2. gen. The office or function of a censor (see CENSOR sb. 2); official supervision.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Censura, the censorship or iudgement.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., II. iii. (1851), 157. Other thing then a Christian censorship.
1856. Froude, Hist. Eng., I. 292. There was no censorship upon speech.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), V. 42. If I were a lawgiver, I would exercise a censorship over the poets.
b. spec. of the press: see CENSOR sb. 2 b.
1827. Hallam, Const. Hist. (1876), III. xv. 166. Even during the existence of a censorship, a host of unlicensed publications … bore witness to the inefficacy of its restrictions.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., III. 80. In the middle of 1806, a decree of the viceroy declared, that no literary censorship should be instituted.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 540. The law which subjected the press to a censorship.
1876. Green, Short Hist., viii. § 5 (1882), 514. The censorship struck fiercer blows at the Puritan press.
c. as a university or college office.
1880. T. Fowler, Locke, ii. 12. The Censorship of Natural Philosophy … he appears never to have held.
