banish
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to expel from or relegate to a country or place by authoritative decree; condemn to exile.
He was banished to Devil's Island.
- Synonyms:
- deport, outlaw, expatriate, exile
-
to compel to depart; send, drive, or put away.
to banish sorrow.
verb
-
to expel from a place, esp by an official decree as a punishment
-
to drive away
to banish gloom
Other Word Forms
- banisher noun
- banishment noun
- self-banished adjective
- unbanished adjective
Etymology
Origin of banish
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English banisshen, from Anglo-French, Old French baniss-, long stem of banir, from unrecorded Frankish bannjan “to proclaim,” akin to ban 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Even Ron Funches joked on Instagram that he wanted some salmon “to go” after he was banished.
From Salon
He observes that labeling certain feelings as negative justifies attempts to banish them, but he counsels doing the opposite.
Leah banished her only child, shipping Lizzie eight hundred miles away to live in Illinois with the father she barely knew.
From Literature
Moments later Cronin was grabbing the kid’s shirt and leading him to the baseline, where he ordered an assistant coach to remove him from the court area and banish him to the locker room.
From Los Angeles Times
South Korea has an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment -- the last prisoners were executed in 1997 -- with a death sentence effectively banishing Yoon to life behind bars.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
