It's Merriam Webster's word of the day for August 24th.

Today's word is cloister, spelled C-L-O-I-S-T-E-R.

Cloister is a verb. To cloister someone or something is to shut the person or thing away from the world.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Florida today. Now the past Melbourne high student body,

president and co-valedictorian, is planning to step down January 20th after serving nearly four years as NASA's administrator.

My constitution is such that I'm not going to retire, and what I said is I'm going to cloister myself

and write a book, and then we'll see what happens. Nelson, who is now 82, told reporters

Wednesday during a roundtable discussion at the Kennedy Space

Center press site. Cloister first entered the English language as a noun in the 13th century,

referring then, as it still does, to a convent or monastery. More than three centuries later,

English speakers began using the verb cloister to mean to seclude in or as if in a cloister.

Today, the noun can also refer to the monastic life or to a covered and usually arched passage along or around a court.

You may also encounter the adjective cloistered with the meaning separated from the rest of the world as if in a cloister, as in she leads a private, cloistered life in the country.

Cloister ultimately comes from the Latin verb cloudere, meaning to close.

Other words that can be traced back to the prolific cloud array route include close, conclude, exclude, include, preclude, seclude, and recluse.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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