Redactions

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of editing or censoring information for confidentiality or privacy; the omission of sensitive data from documents before publication; or the final results that emphasize the remaining content after sensitive information has been removed
2. The act of removing or obscuring part of a text to protect personal or proprietary information; the practice of modifying documents to safeguard against unauthorized disclosure; or the visible outcomes that show the authorized material that remains
3. The procedure of revising texts to eliminate potentially harmful details; the systematic exclusion of confidential information from accessible records; or the components of a document that are permitted for public view after sensitive excerpts have been redacted

Etymology: "Redactions" is simply the plural of "redaction", so it refers to the passages that have been blacked out or removed from a document before it is released. The noun traces back to Latin "redigere", meaning "to lead back, collect, prepare, reduce to a certain state", built from "red-" ("back") and "agere" ("to drive, put in motion"). The sense of gathering material into a fitting form is the root from which the modern meaning of editing and preparing a text grows. The word reached English through French "rédaction", which itself drew on New Latin "redactio". Its original sense was the act of putting a text into shape, preparing or compiling a work for publication, and the idea of removing parts emerged from that older work of reducing material to a required form. Today, the plural describes the deleted or hidden lines in declassified files and legal filings, a meaning that has grown out of editing rather than the reverse.