sequester

SEQUES'TER, v.t. [L. sequestro, to sever or separate, to put int the hands of and indifferent person, as a deposit; sequester, belonging to mediation or umpirage, and as a noun an umpire, referee, midiator. This word is probably a compound of se and the root of quaestus, quaesitus, sought. See Question.]

1. To separate from the owner for a time; to seize or take possession of some property which belongs to another, and hold it tillthe profits hve paid the demand for which it is taken.

Formerly the goods of a defendant in chancery, were, in the last resort, sequestered and detained to enforce the degrees of the court. and now the profits of a benefice are sequestered to pay the debts of the ecclesiastecs. Blackstone.

2. To take from parties in controversy and put into the possession of an indiffernt person.

3. To put aside; to remove; to separate; frome other things.

I had wholly sequestered my civil affairs. Bacon.

4. To sequester one's self, to separate one's self from seciety; to withdraw or retire; to seclude one's self for the sake of privacy or solitude; as, to sequester one's self from action.

5. To cause to retire or withdraw into obscurity.

It was his taylor and his cook, his fine fashions and his French ragouts which sequestered him. South.

SEQUES'TER, v. i. To decline, as a window, any concern with the estate of a husband.