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The vest in divest is a close relation of the kind found in closets—its origin is Latin vestis meaning “clothing, garment.” (Vest has the same source and first appeared in English as a verb in the 15th century meaning “to put on garments or vestments.”) Divest today mostly appears in legal and business contexts about a formal removal or loss of something of value; assets that are divested are sold or given away; someone divested of a right officially loses that right. The word’s first late 16th century use, however, was more intimately related to its roots: divest was then used to mean “to undress or strip especially of clothing, ornament, or equipment.” But broader application of divest soon followed. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, the French King Charles is told via messenger that England’s King Henry “wills you, in the name of God Almighty, / That you divest yourself, and lay apart / ... the crown / And all wide-stretched honours that pertain ...”
Examples of divest in a Sentence
Haleluya Hadero The Associated Press, arkansasonline.com, 7 Dec. 2024
In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that would require ByteDance to divest the app, or companies such as Apple and Google as well as internet hosting providers would have to stop supporting it.
—Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 6 Dec. 2024
TikTok will have to divest itself from its Chinese ownership by Jan. 19 or face being unavailable in the United States, after a federal appeals court rejected the social media giant’s efforts to sideline a federal law.
—Ted Johnson, Deadline, 6 Dec. 2024
In May, TikTok sued the government, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to declare unconstitutional a law that would require its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a ban in the country.
—Wendy Lee, Los Angeles Times, 6 Dec. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Divest.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divest. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
divest
verb
Legal Definition
divest
transitive verb
Anglo-French devestir, literally, to undress, from Old French desvestir, from de(s)-, prefix marking reversal + vestir to dress, from Latin vestire
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