debar

American  

[dih-bahr] / dɪˈbɑr /

verb (used with object)

debars, present (3rd person singular) debarred, past participle, past debarring present participle

1. to shut out or exclude from a place or condition.

   to debar all those who are not members.

   Antonyms:

   admit

2. to hinder or prevent; prohibit.

   to debar an action.

   Synonyms:

   interdict

   Antonyms:

   permit

---

debar British  

/ dɪˈbɑː /

verb

1. to exclude from a place, a right, etc; bar

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• debarment
  noun

Inflected Forms

Participles

• debarring
  present
• debarred
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• debar
  simple
• debars
  simple
• have debarred
  perfect
• has debarred
  perfect
• am debarring
  progressive
• are debarring
  progressive
• is debarring
  progressive
• have been debarring
  perfect progressive
• has been debarring
  perfect progressive

Past

• debarred
  simple
• had debarred
  perfect
• was debarring
  progressive
• were debarring
  progressive
• had been debarring
  perfect progressive

Future

• will debar
  simple
• will have debarred
  perfect
• will be debarring
  progressive
• will have been debarring
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of debar

1400–50; late Middle English < Middle French, Old French desbarrer to lock out, bar. See de-, bar ¹

Explanation

To debar is to officially bar, ban, or exclude someone from doing something. Debar can also mean to prevent something from happening. If you have a hat club, you can debar anyone who’s not wearing one. If someone is barred from entering, they are prevented from entering. Oddly enough, to debar them means the same thing. If you're debarred from a school, you can no longer attend. If a politician is debarred from office, they've been thrown out. You can also debar events. Eating well and exercising can debar many health problems. This kind of debarring means the same as averting. People try to debar negative things from happening.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

debar debars debarred debarring

It is relatively rare for HHS to debar an NIH grantee.

From Science Magazine ● May 15, 2024

On Dec. 30, Labor announced a move to debar or prohibit any new federal contracts with Restaurant Associates.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 4, 2017

You would think that views like that might just debar you from holding that office, but no.

From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2015

“Sexual orientation does not debar anyone from God’s love,” it said in a statement in March.

From New York Times ● May 22, 2015

You would debar me from the one great right of all my life?

From The Broken Gate A Novel by Hough, Emerson

The temptation to do this presses heavily on those whose occupations end with daylight and on those multitudes of elderly folk whose chief sorrow now is that age debars them from public service.

From Time Magazine Archive

It is a false modesty which debars the youth of our land from obtaining such information.

From The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand by Pierce, Ray Vaughn

They are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from its privileges.

From Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story; Vathek, an Arabian Tale by Beckford, William

Yet, alas! one trifling deficiency ruins his prospects; he has an impediment in his speech, which debars him from the use of the W’s.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, December 18, 1841 by Various

If a man goes through life without touching a card, he probably loses a good deal of innocent amusement, and debars himself from much pleasant society.

From The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent by Gordon, Home, Sir, Bart.

Horowitz criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 11, 2023

The divorced, disgraced, and debarred physician was ready to come out of the shadows: He was an illegal abortionist and had been for more than 35 years and 25,000 procedures.

From Slate ● Jun. 15, 2022

The U.N. suspended work with Glocoms in 2013 after a reporter informed it that the World Bank had debarred the company.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 23, 2016

As a result the publisher has been added to the bank's "debarred list", which names and shames organisations found by the bank to have acted corruptly.

From The Guardian ● May 6, 2010

Private Morris debarred our passage with his arm.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

If I did, no doubt, by the same parental authority, my epistle would be intercepted—still further compromising her—still further debarring the chance of a reconciliation with her father!

From The Child Wife by Reid, Mayne

At the opening of the nineteenth century England still kept on the statute book the laws debarring Roman Catholics and dissenters from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office.

From An Introduction to the History of Western Europe by Robinson, James Harvey

This was ingeniously framed with an appearance of justice, as if debarring from office only those who to rebellion had added perjury.

From The Negro and the Nation A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement by Merriam, George Spring

Depend upon my sincerity for this," Defoe answers, "that I am far from debarring you.

From Daniel Defoe by Minto, William

By much musing on this matter, I have convinced myself that man is not capable of debarring himself utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy for many evils that nothing else would cure.

From Septimius Felton, or, the Elixir of Life by Hawthorne, Nathaniel