Ostracize

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈɒstɹəsaɪz/

Definitions

1. To exclude or banish someone from a group or society as a form of social punishment or rejection
2. To deliberately exclude an individual from social or group activities as a means of rejection or punishment
3. To formally or informally ban someone from participating in a community due to disapproval

Etymology: In Athens, citizens who wanted a politician gone could scratch his name onto a piece of broken pottery, an "ostrakon", and drop it into a voting urn. If enough sherds named the same man, he was banished from the city for ten years without any crime having to be proven. Three such sherds survive bearing the names of Themistokles and Neokleos, and they show the procedure was real, not legend. The English verb comes from the Greek "ostrakizein", meaning to banish by this potsherd vote, which was built from "ostrakon", a fragment of earthenware, plus a verb-forming suffix. The sense of exclusion from a community is the one that survives, and the term was taken into English with the vote itself still in the background. The word is cognate with the French "ostraciser".

Synonyms: exclude, shun

Antonyms: include, welcome