ostracize
Americanverb (used with object)
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ostracizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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ostracized,
past participle, past
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ostracizing
present participle
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to exclude, by general consent, from society, friendship, conversation, privileges, etc..
His friends ostracized him after his father's arrest.
- Antonyms:
- accept
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to banish (a person) from their native country; expatriate.
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(in ancient Greece) to banish (a citizen) temporarily by popular vote.
verb
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to exclude or banish (a person) from a particular group, society, etc
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(in ancient Greece) to punish by temporary exile
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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ostracizesimple
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ostracizessimple
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have ostracizedperfect
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has ostracizedperfect
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am ostracizingprogressive
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are ostracizingprogressive
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is ostracizingprogressive
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have been ostracizingperfect progressive
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has been ostracizingperfect progressive
Past
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ostracizedsimple
-
had ostracizedperfect
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was ostracizingprogressive
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were ostracizingprogressive
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had been ostracizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of ostracize
First recorded in 1640–50; from Greek ostrakízein, equivalent to óstrak(on) “potsherd, tile, ballot” (akin to óstreion oyster ( def. ) ) + -izein -ize ( def. )
Explanation
If you banish someone or ignore him, you ostracize him. When the Iranian president claimed that the Holocaust was a hoax, he was ostracized by the international community. Ostraka is an ancient Greek word for pottery shard. Thousands of years ago, in the Greek city of Athens, there was a public process where you would write the name of someone you wanted to kick out of town on a broken ceramic fragment. If enough Athenians wrote the same name, that person was sent away for ten years. This process was called an ostracism.
Vocabulary lists containing ostracize
Grade 10, List 2
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100 Words to Make You Sound Smart
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The Catcher in the Rye
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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:
When the Athenians voted to ostracize him, he became a Persian governor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 9, 2026
“The Traitors” is a social game, so when Funches’ early big swing at another contestant misses terribly, the rest of the players instantly ostracize him.
From Salon ● Jan. 28, 2026
Conlan expressed to her friends that the existence of a secret group text—created with the specific intention to ostracize her, and nobody else—hurt her feelings.
From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2023
The military’s actions caused many nations to ostracize the ruling generals and impose political and economic sanctions on them.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2022
“Look, I wasn’t trying to ostracize anybody. It’s just that she — he lied about who he was.”
From "Beauty Queens" by Libba Bray
Will's signature swagger, which was once-revered in his old town, now ostracizes him from his peers and loved ones.
From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2022
The film portrays how Japanese society, often working like a claustrophobic village, ostracizes and punishes what it sees as erring individuals.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 24, 2021
Mesa County’s “siloed, non-collaborative behavior ostracizes us from our Western Slope neighbors,” she added.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 6, 2019
A man searches for answers a decade after his close-knit high school clique inexplicably ostracizes him.
From Slate ● Nov. 30, 2014
The public condemns and ostracizes a man, even though he has lived an upright life all his days, when some scalawag, for personal or financial reasons, assails him in a newspaper.
From Watch Yourself Go By by Ben W. Warden
And now, all of these years later, you feel ostracized from your remaining family and, more than that, you were left with a few mementoes of those formative years and no inheritance.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
But pro-Soviet intellectuals ostracized him when he dared to speak honestly about life behind the Iron Curtain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
“Crawfie was ostracized as a result, and ‘doing a Crawfie’ became the shorthand term for any Palace employee who betrayed intimate family details for financial gain.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
You can get ostracized from some chat groups.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2025
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.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Some believe the erasure of Black LGBTQ+ leaders stems from respectability politics, a strategy in some marginalized communities of ostracizing or punishing members who don’t assimilate into the dominant culture.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 12, 2023
The Vatican has long argued that in some countries, reporting claims to law enforcement could result in the ostracizing of victims and potentially a death sentence for the accused.
From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2023
Instead of ostracizing Black, some of the students tried to change his mind.
From Slate ● Jan. 11, 2023
“The real harm to transgender youth lies in the bullying and ostracizing that they face for being branded as ‘different.’”
From Washington Times ● Mar. 9, 2022
It sits in judgment not only on its own townsmen but on the rest of the world—enlightening, criticising, ostracizing a heedless universe—and non-conformity to Wentworth standards involves obliteration from Wentworth's consciousness.
From The Hermit and the Wild Woman by Edith Wharton
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.
