The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sequester \Se*ques"ter\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sequestered; p. pr. & vb. n. Sequestering.] [F. s['e]questrer, L. sequestrare to give up for safe keeping, from sequester a depositary or trustee in whose hands the thing contested was placed until the dispute was settled. Cf. Sequestrate.]
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(Law) To separate from the owner for a time; to take from parties in controversy and put into the possession of an indifferent person; to seize or take possession of, as property belonging to another, and hold it till the profits have paid the demand for which it is taken, or till the owner has performed the decree of court, or clears himself of contempt; in international law, to confiscate.
Formerly the goods of a defendant in chancery were, in the last resort, sequestered and detained to enforce the decrees of the court. And now the profits of a benefice are sequestered to pay the debts of ecclesiastics.
--Blackstone. -
To cause (one) to submit to the process of sequestration; to deprive (one) of one's estate, property, etc.
It was his tailor and his cook, his fine fashions and his French ragouts, which sequestered him.
--South. -
To set apart; to put aside; to remove; to separate from other things.
I had wholly sequestered my civil affairss.
--Bacon. -
To cause to retire or withdraw into obscurity; to seclude; to withdraw; -- often used reflexively.
When men most sequester themselves from action.
--Hooker.A love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation.
--Bacon. (Chem.) To bind, so as to make [a metal ion] unavailable in its normal form; -- said of chelating agents, such as EDTA, which, in a solution, bind tightly to multivalent metal cations, thereby lowering their effective concentration in solution. Compounds employed particularly for this purpose are called sequestering agents, or chelating agents. In biochemistry, sequestration is one means of reversibly inhibiting enzymes which depend on divalent metal cations (such as Magnesium) for their activity. Such agents are used, for example, to help preserve blood for storage and subsequent use in transfusion. >
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of sequester English)
Usage examples of "sequestering".
Today marks the end of the 90-day sequestering period prescribed by Deputy Director Bissell, and tomorrow the bulk of our men will be sent to Louisiana.
He couldn't see any good reason for sequestering them on his home planet.
Menolly should have known that this would become an occasion, especially after a long and sequestering winter.
Not only a young woman barely past whatever girlhood that order allowed, but with lifelong religious indoctrination and sequestering from most men in the retreats and religious schools, and even from the mission, where Angel had said there were only two Terran males on the whole planet, which was otherwise inhabited by an agrarian race of some kind of small lizard folk.
Then life was glorious, with champagne and flirtations, and often Wild Whip succeeded in sequestering one of the visitors' wives in some darkened bedroom, so that over the polo games at Hanakai there hung always the ominous shadow of potential scandal.
Not only a young woman barely past whatever girlhood that order allowed, but with lifelong religious indoctrination and sequestering from most men in the retreats and religious schools, and even from the mission, where Angel had said there were only two Terran males on the whole planet, which was otherÂwise inhabited by an agrarian race of some kind of small lizard folk.