> as lemmas

1950 Rep. Departm. Comm. on Children & Cinema 64 in Parl. Papers (Cmd. 7945) VII. 238 We recommend that a new category of films be established (which might be called ‘X’) from which children under 16 should be entirely excluded.

1950 Times 14 July 8/4 The X certificates..will cover films other than those of a ‘horrific’ character, which are ‘wholly adult in conception and treatment’.

1956 ‘M. Innes’ Appleby plays Chicken i. xvii. 139 ‘I'm going up.’ ‘You're doing nothing of the sort. It's X Certificate stuff, my boy, and not for general exhibition. There's a high-up copper who says so.’

1958 Times 9 July 6/3 Mr. Davie..has his ‘X’ certificate pictures..in which his obsessional imagery has taken on an existence, outside the vague allusiveness of the paint, which is too specific for comfort.

1970 N.Y. Times Index 1248/2 Panel of 3 Fed judges rules Penna's new law forbidding showing of previews of x-rated movies.

1972 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 6 Feb. 2/3 There was only one explicit scene—the incest sequence—which caused the film to get an X (no one under 17 admitted).

1973 M. Amis Rachel Papers 136 Sebastian had gone into Oxford to see an X film (‘any X film’ he said) and to moon around looking for girls with his spotty mates.

1974 Florida FL Reporter 13 35/3 ‘Community standards’ should determine whether X-rated movies should be allowed to be shown or not.

1974 Newsweek 20 May 23 His communicators..kept insisting that the transcripts actually clear the President of any crime more grievous than using X-rated language and thinking unsavory thoughts.

1976 Publishers Weekly 24 May 54/3 Most readers will surely X-rate the author's dicta; only the far-out minority will accept them.

1981 TV Picture Life Mar. 6/1 For it was daytime TV shows, or ‘soaps’ as they are affectionately called, that first explored the ‘X’-rated areas of life.

1983 Guardian 15 Oct. 10/7 In America..X-rating is used only for out-and-out porn.