Redacted

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. Describing a document from which confidential or sensitive passages have been blacked out or deleted before release
2. Having had certain words or sections removed or concealed so that private information cannot be read
3. Edited to hide classified, private or secret material, leaving only the portions considered safe to show

Etymology: The word "redacted" is simply the past tense and past participle of "redact," so the story belongs to its root. Latin "redigō" meant "drive back," "lead back," or "reduce," built from "re-" ("back") and "agō" ("put in motion, drive"). The same verb gave Latin its perfect passive participle "redactus," meaning "brought back" or "reduced into order," and that is the form that passed into Old French as "redacter." The sense of gathering scattered material into a single ordered whole survives in the modern meaning of editing a text, and the blacking-out of sensitive passages is a later extension of that idea of reshaping a document. Note that "redact" is a piecewise doublet of "react," which is a surprising pairing: both descend from the same Latin verb "redigō," yet one came through Old French into English as "redact," while "react" arrived by a different route. The two words have drifted so far apart in meaning that few speakers would ever connect them.

Synonyms: censored, expunged, blacked out

Antonyms: unredacted, revealed