Banish

[Dr. Goodword]

• banish •

Pronunciation: bæn-ish • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, transitive

Meaning: 1. To force to leave, to exile from some place, as 'to banish a rowdy from the club'. 2. To drive away, expel, as 'to banish fear from your mind'.

Notes: Someone who banishes is a banisher and the act of banishing is banishment. Do not confuse ban with banish. The former means simply "to prohibit", while the latter means "to chase away".

In Play: We can only be banished from a place: "When Hank Epanki came home smelling of another woman's perfume, his wife banished him from the house for a week." The place may be concrete or abstract: "Banish the thought! I would never think of joining a club whose standards are so low as accept me."

Word History: Today's Good Word was copied from Old French baniss-, an extended form of the verb banir "proclaim; forbid; banish, to outlaw" (Modern French bannir). French apparently borrowed this word from some Germanic language, maybe from an ancestor of English ban. Ban came from Proto-Indo-European bha-n- "to speak". It went into the making of many Indo-European words, like Greek pheme "speech" and phone "voice, sound", both from phanai "to speak". It also produced Sanskrit bhanati "speaks". With a different suffix, Latin created fari "to say", from which fabula "story" and fama "reputation", underlying the English borrowing famous, and Russian created bayka "fairy tale". By the way, ban only coincidentally resembles bane. (Lest he thinks we banished today's remarkable Good Word, let's thank Christ Stewart of South Africa for suggesting it last June.)

[George Kovac]

Dr. Goodword wrote:

Today's Good Word was copied from Old French baniss-, an extended form of the verb banir "proclaim; forbid; banish, to outlaw"

The "proclamation" sense of that Old French word (without any of the negative connotations) is also responsible for the quaint concept of the "banns of marriage." In Christian parishes it was the custom to proclaim, from the pulpit or in print, the names of the parties to impending marriages a few weeks before their wedding date. The banns of marriage were a charming tradition which has only been recently banished by the Catholic Church. I do not know if other denominations continue the practice.

[Perry Lassiter]

I think one of the makn purposes of posting the bans was to prohibit poligamy. Also the reason for the cringeworthy line in old ceremonies, "If anyone can show just cause why this man and this woman should not now be united in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace." Even today we hear of men who secretly have a second family in another town and juggles the two for years before discovery.

[George Kovac]

Perry,

You are absolutely right. Here is a discussion (for layman) of the canon law basis for the practice of publishing banns of marriage: http://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2015/10/15/ ... -any-more/

An anomaly of spelling is that uniquely in the context of “banns of marriage” the word bann is spelled with a double “n.” I note this etymology from dictionary.com about the history of the spelling:

in phrase banns of marriage (late 12c., spelling with double -n- attested from 1540s), from Old English bannan "to summon, command, proclaim" (see ban (v.)). Also probably partly from Old French ban "announcement, proclamation, banns, authorization," from Frankish *ban or some other Germanic cognate of the Old English word.

[LukeJavan8]

The concept of a man with two families was the subject
of a recent "Law and Order: SVU" episode on NBC, within
the last month, and I believe NCIS last year.

[Perry Lassiter]

The etymology George posted for banns as deriving from ban, meaning proclaim suggests the word banner also came from that root.