sequester
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\n \n Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 19, 2024 is:\n \n
\n \n\n sequester • \\sih-KWESS-ter\\ • verb
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To sequester a person or group is to keep them separate or apart from other people. Sequester is also often used to mean \u201cto bind or absorb (carbon dioxide) as part of a larger chemical process or compound.\u201d
\n\n// The jury was sequestered until a verdict was reached.
\n\n\n \n \n\n Examples:
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\u201cWhen sea otters were reintroduced to an Alaskan island, they \u2026 led to the return of offshore kelp. As well as harboring hundreds of biodiverse species, these towering algal forests also sequester carbon.\u201d \u2014 Lucy Cooke, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2023
\n \n \n\n Did you know?
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Sequester is a word that has important legal and scientific uses, and a long history besides. In fact, it can be traced back to the Latin preposition secus, meaning, well, \u201cbeside\u201d or \u201calongside.\u201d Setting someone or something apart (figuratively \u201cto the side\u201d) from the rest is sequester\u2019s raison d\u2019\xeatre. We frequently hear it in the context of the courtroom, as juries are sometimes sequestered for the safety of their members or to prevent the influence of outside sources on a verdict. It is also possible, legally speaking, to sequester property\u2014sequester can mean both \u201cto seize\u201d and \u201cto deposit\u201d property by a writ of sequestration. The scientific sense of sequester most often encountered these days has to do with the binding or absorption of carbon. Kelp forests, for example, sequester massive amounts of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, keeping it \u201capart\u201d from the atmosphere\u2014by some estimates doing so twenty times as much as terrestrial forests. You might even say kelp\u2019s got this sequestering thing locked up.
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