ostracize

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   avoid speaking to or dealing with

   Ever since I spoke up, my colleagues ostracize me.

2. 2
   verb

   To ban a person from a city for five or ten years through the procedure of ostracism.

   Republics have been accused of being ungrateful. Aristides was ostracised for being called the Just, and Themistocles banished, after saving his country from desolation.

Simplified etymology

Ostracize comes from the ancient Athenian practice of voting to exile someone by writing the person’s name on an ostrakon, a shell or fragment of pottery. Someone expelled in this way was ostracized; the word later broadened to mean excluding a person from a society or group.

From Ancient Greek ὀστρακίζω (ostrakízō, “to banish from a city by ostracism”), from ὄστρᾰκον (óstrăkon, “earthenware vessel; fragment of such a vessel, potsherd”) (from the fact that when voting was held to decide whether to banish people, their names were inscribed on potsherds) + -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō, suffix forming verbs)). The English word is cognate with French ostraciser.

Topics

External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary