banish
Americanverb (used with object)
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banishes,
present (3rd person singular)
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banished,
past participle, past
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banishing
present participle
-
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
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to compel to depart; send, drive, or put away.
to banish sorrow.
verb
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to expel from a place, esp by an official decree as a punishment
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to drive away
to banish gloom
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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banishsimple
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banishessimple
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have banishedperfect
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has banishedperfect
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am banishingprogressive
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are banishingprogressive
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is banishingprogressive
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have been banishingperfect progressive
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has been banishingperfect progressive
Past
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banishedsimple
-
had banishedperfect
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was banishingprogressive
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were banishingprogressive
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had been banishingperfect progressive
Future
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
Explanation
To banish is to get rid of. Think very carefully before you banish someone from your group. Someday, you may want that person around again. Banish rhymes with vanish, which is exactly what happens when you banish someone. Suppose a king, angry with some of his subjects, banishes them. They have to leave the kingdom and vanish — not just go home and wait for the king to change his mind. Banish comes from the Old French word bannir, which means "proclaim as an outlaw." It is serious and absolute. You can see the word ban in banish, but to ban something is not as harsh as banishing it.
Vocabulary lists containing banish
100 Words Every Middle Schooler Should Know
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Essential Academic Vocabulary for Middle School Students, List 6
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act III
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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.
See Examples For:
We should banish it, because I’ve learned the hard way that it’s too abstract.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
Peter Stolypin, one of the most accomplished Russian statesmen of the era, loathed Rasputin but couldn’t convince the czar to banish him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
History reminds us big stand offs between London and Washington, such as the UK resisting American pressure to send troops to Vietnam, don't have to banish relations to a perpetual deep freeze.
From BBC ● Mar. 3, 2026
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 ● Feb. 18, 2026
Together we could banish our loneliness, yours and mine!
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
"Anyone who banishes Stolpersteine and memorial sites commemorating Jewish life from public spaces to the cemetery is prioritising death over life and rendering Jewish people invisible once again," she told Bild.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026
Mary appears to have a form of treatment-resistant schizophrenia, until chemotherapy, following a diagnosis of lymphoma, banishes her psychiatric symptoms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
It banishes darkness, conveys telecommunications signals between continents and makes visible the invisible, from faraway galaxies to the smallest bacterium.
From Science Daily ● May 23, 2024
But Rama soon hears that his subjects are gossiping about Sita’s purity and banishes her to the forest once more — this time alone, while pregnant.
From Salon ● Nov. 11, 2023
And then something happens that banishes even that mystery from my head.
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
It was a note of caution that showed questions about the Games' future had not been banished as the 2026 Games closed on Sunday evening.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026
Its pendant is a statue of Thomas Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence, banished from New York’s City Council Chamber in 2021 because of what the exhibition calls “his history as an enslaver.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
Eight years on, and such concerns have been completely banished.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2026
Now she has been banished along with fruit and vegetable sellers to a vacant lot with lower foot traffic, her turnover roughly halving as a result.
From Barron's ● Jun. 2, 2026
“If they got divorced, and if she tried to kill him, and if he banished her from Iran, why did she keep his name?”
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
Five years later, Madison Square Garden was planted atop it, banishing sunlight and driving commuters into a subterranean maze of passageways.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026
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 ● Feb. 19, 2026
In case you’ve forgotten where “Stranger Things” left us, Vecna revealed that Eleven accidentally created him by banishing him to the Upside Down.
From Salon ● Nov. 24, 2025
But the proposed move has largely been perceived as banishing the journalist to a TV backwater where viewers and advertisers dollars are scant.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 28, 2025
I wondered if Dad had agreed to it because of his guilt for banishing Mr. Bykovski to the mine.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
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.
