ostracize
Part of speech: verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: 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.
Inflected forms:
form: ostracizes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: ostracizing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: ostracized
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: ostracized
pos: verb
tags: past
form: ostracise
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: To ban a person from a city for five or ten years through the procedure of ostracism.
pos: verb
tags: British
English
Oxford
US
historical
transitive
examples: Republics have been accused of being ungrateful. Aristides was ostracised for being called the Just, and Themistocles banished, after saving his country from desolation.
[T]he person who was ostracised was obliged to leave Athens within ten days after the sentence, and unless a vote of the people recalled him before the expiration of that time, to stay in exile for ten years.
The Athenian Hyperbolus, who had been ostracized some years before by the coalition of Nikias and Alkibiades, together with their respective partisans—ostracized (as Thucydides tells us) not from any fear of his power and over-transcendent influence, but from his bad character and from his being a disgrace to the city—and thus ostracized by an abuse of the institution—was now resident at Samos.
gloss: To exclude a person from a community or from society by not communicating with them or by refusing to acknowledge their presence; to refuse to associate with or talk to; to shun.
pos: verb
tags: British
English
Oxford
US
broadly
examples: You then moſt Noble Equivocations and Alluſions, whom Rhetorick would Oſtraciſe, ſeek Revenge for your Baniſhment; [...]
The inflexible advocate[s] of the people's rights, were either expelled the Senate Chamber, ostracised, or immolated on the reeking altars of patriotism, by the encrimsoned sword of slaughtering persecution.
[O]thers may wonder at the mawkish taste of a community which, instead of ostracising such a palpable charlatan at once, attended and praised all that he had to say!
No party worthy of the name will submit, permanently, to any regime which ostracises its best men and selects the worst, which has become an epidemic condition of party politics, and may take off most of what is worth recognizing in the pride of our boasted institutions.
Fashion not only sustains bad writers, but ostracizes and banishes good ones. [William] Shakespeare's writings were popular while he lived, but almost forgotten for two centuries after his death.
Q. Have you any knowledge aside from your own case of their socially ostracizing a man?—A. There are almost a dozen in this room, I guess, that I know of; perhaps a dozen.
Our honest and conservative financiers should frown upon and ostracize these black sheep, whether they are cornering the wheat market or manipulating prices on the Stock Exchange by wash sales and otherwise, or promoting a Shipyard Trust, or playing profitably with the surplus funds of a life insurance company.
I long to be one with the birds and trees and with the green earth. The call comes to me from the air to sing, but, wretched creature that I am, I lecture—and by doing it, I ostracise myself from this great world of songs to which I was born.
[T]raditions such as the bouquet toss and the "singles" table at the wedding reception often marginalize and ostracize lesbians and gays in attendance.
Ostracism can be observed from an early age, and continues throughout the life-cycle. Children ostracize other children in the playground, choosing carefully who they wish to play with. Adults ostracize other adults, such as marriage partners using the silent treatment.
[A] traditional chief attended our Human Rights Defenders Forum in Atlanta and then returned home to discover that a local soldier had raped a fourteen-year-old girl. The chief personally found the soldier, tied him to a chair, and waited for the police to arrive and arrest him. He then used his influence to prevent anyone from condemning or ostracizing the girl. The benefits from this kind of bold action have been proven in Malawi, Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, and other African countries.
A common practice by established parties in liberal democracies that often accompanies delegitimisation efforts is ostracising a challenger party. In this book's first chapter we have defined ostracising a party as systematically ruling out all political cooperation with that party [...].
Related words: ostracism
ostracon
ostrakon
ostracum
ostracy
silent treatment
Derived words: ostracizable
ostracisable
ostracization
ostracisation
ostracized
ostracised
ostracizer
ostraciser
ostracizing
ostracising
unostracized
unostracised
Translations: