sequester

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 19, 2024 is: sequester \sih-KWESS-ter\ verb To sequester a person or group is to keep them separate or apart from other people. Sequester is also often used to mean “to bind or absorb (carbon dioxide) as part of a larger chemical process or compound.” // The jury was sequestered until a verdict was reached. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sequester) Examples: “When sea otters were reintroduced to an Alaskan island, they … led to the return of offshore kelp. As well as harboring hundreds of biodiverse species, these towering algal forests also sequester carbon.” — Lucy Cooke, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2023 Did you know? 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](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/preposition) secus, meaning, well, “beside” or “alongside.” Setting someone or something apart (figuratively “to the side”) from the rest is sequester’s [raison d’être](https://bit.ly/3IYU5XM). 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—sequester can mean both “to seize” and “to deposit” property by a [writ](https://bit.ly/4a7pqDL) of [sequestration](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sequestration). The scientific sense of sequester most often encountered these days has to do with the binding or absorption of [carbon](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carbon). [Kelp](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kelp) forests, for example, sequester massive amounts of carbon dioxide during [photosynthesis](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/photosynthesis), keeping it “apart” from the atmosphere—by some estimates doing so twenty times as much as terrestrial forests. You might even say kelp’s got this sequestering thing locked up.