ban

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to prohibit especially by legal means or social pressure

   This referendum will ban smoking inside all government buildings.

2. 2
   verb

   to forbid the public distribution of media

   The government is temporarily banning books with inappropriate themes.

3. 3
   verb

   to expel from a community or group

   The sect banned them for not following the rules.

4. 4
   verb

   to banish from a place of residence, as for punishment

   We banned them because of their behavior.

5. 5
   verb

   To prohibit; to interdict; to proscribe; to forbid or block from participation.

   Bare feet are banned in this establishment.

6. 6
   verb

   To curse; to execrate.

   They will curse and ban[…]even into the deep pit of hell, all that gainsay their appetite.

7. 7
   verb

   To curse; to utter curses or maledictions.

   :“I seldom ban, sir,” said he to the man; “but if you play any of your hound's-foot tricks, and leave puir Berwick before he's sorted, to rin after spuilzie, deil be wi' me if I do not give your craig a thraw”

8. 8
   noun

   A prohibition.

   That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence, Much more to taste it under ban to touch

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English bannen (“to summon; to banish; to curse”), partly from Old English bannan (“to summon, command, proclaim, call out”), from Proto-West Germanic *bannan; and partly from Old Norse banna (“to prohibit; to curse”), both from Proto-Germanic *bannaną (“to proclaim, to order; to summon; to ban; to curse, forbid”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂-new-ti ~ bʰh₂-n̥w-énti, innovative nasal-infixed zero-grade athematic present of *bʰeh₂- (“to say”). Cognate with Dutch bannen (“to ban, exile, discard”), German bannen (“to exile, to exorcise, captivate, excommunicate”), Swedish…