ban
Pronunciation: /ˈbæn/
The English word “ban” has 14 meanings listed here.
verb
noun
- A prohibition.
- A public proclamation or edict; also, a summons by public proclamation, and in early use especially a summons to arms.
- The gathering of the (French) king’s vassals for war; the whole body of vassals assembled this way, or liable to be summoned; originally the same as arriere-ban, but distinct since the 16th century, following French usage—see arriere-ban.
- A curse or anathema.
- A pecuniary mulct or penalty laid upon a delinquent for offending against a ban, such as a mulct paid to a bishop by one guilty of sacrilege or other crimes.
- A subdivision of currency, equal to one hundredth of a Romanian leu.
- A subdivision of currency, equal to one hundredth of a Moldovan leu.
- A unit measuring information or entropy based on base-ten logarithms, rather than the base-two logarithms that define the bit.
- A title used in several states in central and south-eastern Europe between the 7th century and the 20th century.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English bannen (“to summon; to banish; to curse”), partly from Old English bannan (“to summon, command, proclaim, call out”), from Proto-West Germanic *bannan; and partly from Old Norse banna (“to prohibit; to curse”), both from Proto-Germanic *bannaną (“to proclaim, to order; to summon; to ban; to curse, forbid”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂-new-ti ~ bʰh₂-n̥w-énti,…
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.