Crossword clues for ostracize
ostracize
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ostracize \Os"tra*cize\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Ostracized; p. pr. & vb. n. Ostracizing.] [Gr. 'ostraki`zein, fr. 'o`strakon a tile, a tablet used in voting, a shell; cf. 'o`streon oyster, 'oste`on bone. Cf. Osseous, Oyster.]
(Gr. Antiq.) To exile by ostracism; to banish by a popular vote, as at Athens.
--Grote.To banish from society, by a general consent; to exclude from social, political, or private favor; to exclude from conversation or friendship; to shun; as, he was ostracized by his former friends. A person may be ostracized by a formal vote or by a widespread but informal agreement.
--Marvell.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1640s, from Greek ostrakizein "to banish," literally "to banish by voting with potshards" (see ostracism). Figurative sense of "to exclude from society" is attested from 1640s. Related: Ostracization; ostracized; ostracizing.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To exclude (a person) from society or from a community, by not communicating with (them) or by refusing to acknowledge (their) presence; to refuse to talk to or associate with; to shun. 2 (lb en historical) To ban a person from the city of (l en Athens) for ten years.
WordNet
Usage examples of "ostracize".
He gets away with doing and saying things that would ostracize a lesser man.
He worried for fear he would do something irrational while the attack was upon him, and ostracize himself in the village.
If Daran had been allowed into the Engineering Bureau, instead of being ostracized because he was an Earthling, he might have been able to prevent this.
His wounds healed, giving him such a hideous and ghastly appearance that he was virtually ostracized from the sight of his fellows.
Eastern countries is used as a means of criminal punishment, the survival of the persecuted individual being immaterial to the torturers, as he would be branded for life and ostracized if he recovered.
The gruesome spectacle he presented ostracized him from the pleasures of friendship and society, and sometimes interfered with his travels.
He who had been ostracized from play with other children, led a lonely life except for her and previously a handful of older companions.
When it became known that Claudette had not only committed herself in this unprecedented way, but had entered estrus and allowed herself to conceive by an ephemeral, some of the elders demanded that she be ostracized.
Atrophane society might ostracize the House of Veta, but a man who knew the Wilderness would be welcomed and respected.
Whether as a result of this treatment, or from the inescapable realization that in ostracizing the Lanyons she distressed no one but Charlotte, she appeared next morning with so firm a smile, and so inexhaustible a flow of amiable commonplaces, that she might have been supposed to have suffered a complete loss of memory.
To socially ambitious people like the Pierces, being ostracized probably did sound like a fate worse than death.
But since gratitude is unknown to the Greeks, Themistocles was ostracized.
One town and another have been ostracized or destroyed, their wharfs left far inland or carried away to some commerceless bayou.
With their heads down disconsolately, the chaplain, Major Major and Major Danby moved toward their jeeps in an ostracized group, each holding himself friendlessly several feet away from the other two.
He was hoeing pineapple when he made this decision, and it was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but he dropped his hoe and walked in a kind of glorious daze out to the main highway and on into Kapaa, where the ostracized Hashimoto had a photograph shop and an agency for ships traveling to Japan.