ostracize
/ˈɔstɹəsɑez/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.79 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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!"
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ὀστρακίζω
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɔstɹəsɑez/
- British English: /ˈɒstɹəsaɪz/
Usage
- American usage
- Transitive verb