• redactor (n.): one who redacts; one who prepares matter for publication; an editor; [e.g.]: “Each successive singer and redactor furnishes it [the primeval mythus] with new personages, new scenery, to please a new audience”. (Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881, “Nibelungen Lied”, 1890); “Distrust of Dorothea’s competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust of any other redactor”. (George Eliot (neé Mary Anne Evans), “Middlemarch”, 1871-1872, 1). [also, as French, redacteur; from French rédacteur + Spanish, Portugese redactor = Italian redattore, from New Latin redactor, ‘an editor’, Latin redigere, pp. redactus, ‘lead back’, ‘collect’, ‘reduce to a certain state’: see redact]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• redactor (n.): someone who puts text into appropriate form for publication; (synonyms): reviser, rewrite man, rewriter; abbreviator, abridger (one who shortens or abridges or condenses a written work); editor, editor in chief (a person responsible for the editorial aspects of publication; the person who determines the final content of a text, especially of a newspaper or magazine). ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0).

• redact (tr.v.): 1† (obsolete): to bring to a specified form or condition; force or compel to assume a certain form; reduce; [e.g.]: “Then was the teste or potsherd [the brasse, golde, and syluer] redaite into dust”. (George Joye, 1495-1553, “The Exposicion of Daniel the Prophete”, ii); “They were now become miserable, wretched, sinful, redact to extreme calamity”. (Francis Bacon, “The Works of Francis Bacon”, p. 46; Halliwell); “Plants they had, but metals whereby they might make use of those plants, and redact them to any form or instruments of work, were yet (till Tubal Cain) to seek”. (Bishop Joseph Hall, 1574-1656, “The Character of Man, 1635); 2. to bring into a presentable literary form; edit; [e.g.]: “I saw the reporters’ room, in which they redact their hasty stenographs”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “English Traits”, 1856, p. 265). [from Old French redacter, Spanish redactar, ‘redact’, ‘edit’, from Latin redactus, pp. of redigere (hence French rédiger + Dutch redigeren = German redigiren, Swedish redigera = Danish redigere), ‘drive’, ‘lead’, or ‘bring back’, ‘call in’, ‘collect’, ‘raise’, ‘receive’, ‘reduce to a certain state’, from red-, ‘back’+ agere, ‘drive’, ‘do’; see act ]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• redact (tr.v.; redacted, redacting, redacts): 1. to draw up or frame (a proclamation, for example); 2. to make ready for publication; edit or revise; 3. to delete or remove (private or sensitive information) from a document in preparation for publication; (n.): redactor. [Middle English redacten, from Latin redigere, redāct-, ‘to drive back’, from red-, ‘re-’ + agere, ‘to drive’, ‘do’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

• redact (tr.v.): 1. to compose or draft (an edict, proclamation, etc); 2. to put (a literary work, etc) into appropriate form for publication; edit; (n.): redactor, redaction; (adj.): redactional. [C15: from Latin redigere, ‘to bring back’, from red-, ‘re-’ + agere, ‘to drive’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

• redact (v.): to put into suitable literary form; edit; (n.): redaction.[1830-40; from Latin redāctus, past participle of redigere, ‘to drive back’, ‘restore’]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

• redact (v.): formulate in a particular style or language; (synonyms): put, cast, frame, couch; [e.g.]: “I wouldn’t put it that way”; “She cast her request in very polite language”; give voice, phrase, word, articulate, formulate (put into words or an expression); [e.g.]: “He formulated his concerns to the board of trustees”; 2. prepare for publication or presentation by correcting, revising, or adapting; (synonyms): edit, alter, change, modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation); [e.g.]: “Edit a book on lexical semantics”; “She edited the letters of the politician so as to omit the most personal passages”; “The advent of desktop publishing altered knowledge dissemination”; “The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue”; interpolate, alter, falsify (insert words into texts, often falsifying it thereby); cut up, hack (significantly cut up a manuscript); black out (suppress by censorship as for political reasons); [e.g.]: “Parts of the newspaper article were blacked out”; blank out (cut out, as for political reasons); [e.g.]: “Several lines in the report were blanked out”; copyedit, copyread, subedit (edit and correct written or printed material); bracket out, bracket (place into brackets); [e.g.]: “Please bracket this remark”. ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0).

• redact (v.): to edit sensitive documents before release to the public; [e.g.]: “With today’s heightened awareness of the legal implications of exposing information, it is common to redact even email messages before sending them”. ~ (The Computer Language Company Inc.).

• redaction (n.): 1. the act of reducing to order; the act of preparing for publication; said of literary or historical matter; [e.g.]: “To work up literary matter and give it a presentable form is neither compiling, nor editing, nor resetting; and the operation performed on it is exactly expressed by redaction”. (Fitzedward Hall, 1825-1901, “Modern English”, 1873, p. 310); 2. a work thus prepared; a special form, edition, or version of a work as digested, revised, or rewritten; [e.g.]: “In an early redaction of the well-known ballad of Lord Ronald, which was published in the Universal Magazine for 1804, the name of the unfortunate victim to ‘eels boil’d in brue’ is Laird Rowland”. (Notes and Queries, 6th series, xɪɪ. 134⁽*⁾); “This fresh discovery does not furnish us with the date of the story, but it gives us the date of one of its redactions, and shows it must have existed in the middle of the fourteenth century”. (Edinburgh Review, ᴄʟxɪᴠ. 192); “Ionic redaction of Cynaithos of Chios about the middle of the sixth century”. (American Journal of Philology, ᴠɪɪ. 233); 3. the staff of writers on a newspaper or other periodical; an editorial staff or department. ~ (Imperial Dictionary); 4†. the act of drawing back; a withdrawal; [e.g.]: “It takes away all reluctation and redaction, infuseth a pliable willingness; of wolfish and dogged, makes the will lamb-like and dove-like”. (Rev. Samuel Ward, 1577-1640, “Sermons and Treatises”, p. 31). [= Dutch redaktie = German, Swedish, Danish redaktion = French rédaction, ‘a compiling’, also ‘a working over’, ‘editing’, ‘the editorial staff’ = Spanish redaccion, Portuguese redacção, Italian redazione, from New Latin redactio(n-), ‘redaction’, from Latin redigere, pp. redactus, ‘lead back’, ‘colleet’, ‘prepare’, ‘reduce to a certain state’; see redact]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).