Meanings
present singular third person forbans · participle present forbanning · participle past forbanned · past forbanned
- archaicobsoletepoeticraretransitiveTo exile; banish.
Kenneth Meredith has noted that the coutumiers of northern France "usually called for the confiscation of the property of both executed criminals and persons who had been forbanned."
2013, Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice2 more examples
That lower down it constitutes correspondential phytostatics, or pressure of vegetable life, grasping matter close with prolonged human fingers in the trees, and forbanning materialism from the very stones.
1876, James John Garth Wilkinson, On Human Science: Good and Evil, and on Divine RevelationLost from those archangelic thrones that star, Fadeless and fixed, heaven's light of azure bliss; Forbanned of all His splendor and depressed Beyond the birth of the first sun, and lower Than the last star's decline
1918, Clark Ashton Smith, "Satan Unrepentant"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Satan_Unrepentant (also on page 295 of the 2014 collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies)
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
- Old Frenchforbenir“to banish”
- Middle Englishfor-
- Middle Englishforbannen
- Englishforban
From Middle English forbannen, partly from Middle English for- + bannen, equivalent to for- + ban; and partly from Old French forbenir (“to banish”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferbonne (“to banish”), West Frisian ferbanne (“to banish”), Dutch verbannen (“to banish”), German Low German verbannen (“to banish”), German verbannen (“to banish”), Swedish förbanna (“to curse, damn”).
More words from Middle English, Old French
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with forban
All rhymes →Cite this entry
forban. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/forban
“forban.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/forban. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “forban,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/forban.
Source: forban on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.