sequestration

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of sequestering; segregation.
2. n. Law Seizure of property.
3. n. Law A writ authorizing seizure of property.
4. n. Chemistry The inhibition or prevention of normal ion behavior by combination with added materials, especially the prevention of metallic ion precipitation from solution by formation of a coordination compound with a phosphate.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of sequestering, or the state of being sequestered or set aside; separation; retirement; seclusion from society.
2. n. Disunion; disjunction; division; rupture.
3. n. In law:
4. n. The separation of a thing in controversy from the possession of those who contend for it.
5. n. The setting apart of the goods and chattels of a deceased person to whom no one was willing to take out administration.
6. n. A writ directed by the Court of Chancery to commissioners or to the sheriff, commanding them or him to enter the lands and seize the goods of the person against whom it is directed. It might be issued against a defendant who is in contempt by reason of neglect or refusal to appear or answer or to obey a decree of court.
7. n. The act of taking property from the owner for a time till the rents, issues, and profits satisfy a demand; especially, in ecclesiastical practice, a species of execution for debt in the case of a beneficed clergyman, issued by the bishop of the diocese on the receipt of a writ to that effect, under which the profits of the benefice are paid over to the creditor until his claim is satisfied.
8. n. The gathering of the fruits of a vacant benefice for the use of the next incumbent.
9. n. The seizure of the property of an individual for the use of the state: particularly applied to the seizure by a belligerent power of debts due by its subjects to the enemy.
10. n. The seizing of the estate of an insolvent or a bankrupt, by decree of a competent court, for behoof of the creditors.
11. n. The formation of a sequestrum; the separation of a dead piece of bone (or cartilage) from the living bone (or cartilage) about it.

Wiktionary

1. n. The process or act of sequestering.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Civil & Com. Law) The act of separating, or setting aside, a thing in controversy from the possession of both the parties that contend for it, to be delivered to the one adjudged entitled to it. It may be voluntary or involuntary.
2. n. (Chancery) A prerogative process empowering certain commissioners to take and hold a defendant's property and receive the rents and profits thereof, until he clears himself of a contempt or performs a decree of the court.
3. n. (Eccl. Law) A kind of execution for a rent, as in the case of a beneficed clerk, of the profits of a benefice, till he shall have satisfied some debt established by decree; the gathering up of the fruits of a benefice during a vacancy, for the use of the next incumbent; the disposing of the goods, by the ordinary, of one who is dead, whose estate no man will meddle with.
4. n. (Internat. Law) The seizure of the property of an individual for the use of the state; particularly applied to the seizure, by a belligerent power, of debts due from its subjects to the enemy.
5. n. The state of being separated or set aside; separation; retirement; seclusion from society.
6. n. obsolete Disunion; disjunction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the action of forming a chelate or other stable compound with an ion or atom or molecule so that it is no longer available for reactions
2. n. the act of segregating or sequestering
3. n. a writ that authorizes the seizure of property
4. n. seizing property that belongs to someone else and holding it until profits pay the demand for which it was seized