DIVEST • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Divest

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/daɪvˈɛst/ /dɪvˈɛst/ Listen

verb

Divest v. t. (past & past part. divested; pres. part. divesting)

To unclothe; to strip, as of clothes, arms, or equipage; opposed to invest.

Fig.: To strip; to deprive; to dispossess; as, to divest one of his rights or privileges; to divest one's self of prejudices, passions, etc. "Wretches divested of every moral feeling." "The tendency of the language to divest itself of its gutturals."

(Law) See Devest.

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Etymology of 'Divest'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Divest" Quotes from Famous Books

... entirely divest himself of his own modern habits of thought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of a knight or monk of the Middle Ages, it might be a question whether those feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "What!" he might ...

— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... twice-wedded wife her liberty—the last hours of liberty she would ever know. I left her to busy herself with the trifles she best loved—trifles of dress and personal adornment, for which many women barter away their soul's peace and honor, and divest themselves of the last shred of right and honest principle merely to outshine others of their own sex, and sow broadcast heart-burnings, petty envies, mean hatreds and contemptible spites, where, if they did but choose, there might be a ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... last sole master of the house. The Fouques' land belonged to him in fact, if not in law. He never thought of establishing himself on it. It was too narrow a field for his ambition. To till the ground and cultivate vegetables seemed to him boorish, unworthy of his faculties. He was in a hurry to divest himself of everything recalling the peasant. With his nature refined by his mother's nervous temperament, he felt an irresistible longing for the enjoyments of the middle classes. In all his calculations, therefore, he had regarded the sale of the Fouques' property as the final consummation. ...

— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... ruinous to leather. I know that much," declared Grace. "Weasie, you should have told us to leave our shoes on land and come into the sands barefoot. I suppose that's why all the picture dancers are barefoot on the sands; it's so hard on slippers. There's a barrel. Let's anchor that and divest ourselves. Did you ever see dry land so far away? This sand is as bad as ...

— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not so divest ourselves of it as to throw it completely off, we cannot be free from misery. And it is clear that there must be grief where anything has the appearance of a present sore and oppressing evil. Epicurus is of opinion, that grief arises naturally from the imagination ...

— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

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