redaction
Americannoun
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the editing of text so as to hide or remove confidential or sensitive information.
Transcripts of the hearing will be available online once the redaction is completed.
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the text or information that has been removed or hidden.
Most of the redactions pertain to the privacy interests of the parties, including Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, and home addresses.
Other Word Forms
- redactional adjective
Etymology
Origin of redaction
First recorded in 1610–20; from French rédaction, equivalent to Latin redāct(us) + -iō -ion ( def. ); redact ( def. )
Explanation
Redaction is a fancy way to describe the process of organizing and editing something before publishing it. Your fifty-page story will need some redaction before the school literary magazine will accept it! You can use the noun redaction for the finished version of a text as well as the process of getting it into this form: "You can throw that copy away, because I've got the redaction ready for you to look at." It's also common to see redaction defined as a censored version of a document, like the redaction journalists receive from the CIA, with classified sections blacked out.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
At the hearing, Bondi faced sharp criticism over the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation — specifically over redaction errors in the release millions of case files last month.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 12, 2026
“Within the past 48 hours, the undersigned alone has reported thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors whose lives have been turned upside down by DOJ’s latest release,” the lawyers wrote.
From Slate • Feb. 3, 2026
They said Sunday that they are alarmed that the government didn’t perform a basic keyword search of victim names to verify the success of its redaction process.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 1, 2026
Due to the redaction of the email address belonging to the author of the reply, we cannot confirm whether it was written by Sarah Ferguson.
From BBC • Feb. 1, 2026
Of course no single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story as I have just outlined it.
From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 by Saintsbury, George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
