BANISH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Banish

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/bˈænɪʃ/ Listen

verb

Banish v. t. (past & past part. banished; pres. part. banishing)

To condemn to exile, or compel to leave one's country, by authority of the ruling power. "We banish you our territories."

To drive out, as from a home or familiar place; used with from and out of. "How the ancient Celtic tongue came to be banished from the Low Countries in Scotland."

To drive away; to compel to depart; to dispel. "Banish all offense."

Synonyms: To Banish, Exile, Expel. The idea of a coercive removal from a place is common to these terms. A man is banished when he is forced by the government of a country (be he a foreigner or a native) to leave its borders. A man is exiled when he is driven into banishment from his native country and home. Thus to exile is to banish, but to banish is not always to exile. To expel is to eject or banish summarily or authoritatively, and usually under circumstances of disgrace; as, to expel from a college; expelled from decent society.

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Etymology of 'Banish'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Banish" Quotes from Famous Books

... ask, out of what Commonwealth Plato doth banish them? In sooth, thence where he himself alloweth community of women. So, as belike this banishment grew not for effeminate wantonness, since little should poetical sonnets be hurtful, when a man might have what woman he listed. ...

— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... robe, knocked at the sacristy door. The sharp noise recalled him to himself. He knew that for the first time in his life he had been the slave of an optical delusion. He knew it, and yet he could not banish the feeling that God himself was averse from the act that he was on the point of committing in this church that confronted Islam, that God himself shuddered as surely even He, the Creator, must shudder ...

— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... to his work again. And though he tried to banish the puzzle from his mind it still continued to haunt and to ...

— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... responsible. It failed in the matter of the soil pipe. It does sometimes to this very day. Knocking a man in the head with an axe, or sticking a knife into him, goes against the grain. Slowly poisoning a hundred so that the pockets of one be made to bulge may not even banish a man from respectable society. We are a queer lot in some things. However, that is hardly quite fair to society. It is a fact that that part of it which would deserve the respect of its fellow-citizens has got rid of its tenement-house property ...

— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... banish all hope from Hardman, who led them along the trail a short way, then turned on to the pile of rocks beside which Frank had seen him standing a short ...

— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

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