Ostracised

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Forced to be left out or ignored by a community or group
2. Deliberately kept apart from social or communal activities by others
3. Subjected to social rejection or barred from participating in a collective

Etymology: "Ostracised" is the British spelling of "ostracized," and the verb behind it goes back to ancient Athens. The Greeks used "ostrakon," a potsherd or fragment of pottery, as a voting token. Once a year, citizens could scratch the name of a man they wanted exiled onto a shard, and a person whose name appeared often enough was sent away from the city for ten years without losing his property. The practice, called ostracism, was a political tool, and the sherds it produced are still found by archaeologists today. English took the idea from Greek and then gave it a broader sense. The Greek root became "ostrakizein," meaning to banish by this vote, and the English verb kept the core notion of being cast out by the community. Over time the physical act of voting with pottery faded, and the word came to describe any exclusion from a group, whether formal or informal.

Synonyms: excluded, shunned, rejected, banished, isolated

Antonyms: included, accepted, welcomed, embraced, integrated