Perhaps lawyers like redact because it sounds more forceful than edit , as if they are doing something to the text it won't recover from. The first editor who uses redact will have to have a quintupled salary. When all that metal was flying about, it was safer to have a name for it. The shell exploded in the air, above opposing troops. Later, the term for fragments from any exploding shell.
Snitch is a synonym for nose, so that meaning seems paramount, even in the films noirs of our day.
In the age of the Virago Press, it seems almost beside the point to recall the medieval mystery plays in which someone enacted the role of an obscure Muslim deity called Tervagant . This personification of evil, violence and general bad behavior met the Christian passion for a scapegoat of Semitic origin. We cannot be certain. To talk it used to mean being agreeable and pleasant, but talking turkey changed to frankly, tough, no nonsense until we at last got cold turkey , meaning the unadorned truth. Drug withdrawal, ghost-inspired terror, bumps in the night, all make the skin bristle and the short hairs erect themselves.