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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
Jordan Freiman, CBS News, 5 Mar. 2025
Fox divested its entertainment assets — a key component to major streaming platforms — in the sale to Disney in 2019, removing Fox from that game, Tomsic said.
—Lillian Rizzo, CNBC, 27 Feb. 2025
Walgreens Boots Alliance took its plan to divest VillageMD a step further, hiring Evercore and Alvarez & Marsal to assist with an exit, Bloomberg reports.
—Aaron Weitzman, Axios, 13 Feb. 2025
Under a law signed by President Biden last year, TikTok was ordered to divest its US operations on national security grounds.
—Will McCurdy, PCMAG, 9 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for divest
Cite this Entry
“Divest.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divest. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
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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