Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ostracize in a sentence

13 example sentences · verb

Ostracize means to ban a person from a city for five or ten years through the procedure of ostracism. Example: “They were ostracized for breaking the blue wall of silence about police misconduct.”

Examples of ostracize by meaning

verbTo exclude a person from a community or from society by not communicating with them or by refusing to acknowledge their...

  • The call comes to me from the air to sing, but, wretched creature that I am, I lecture—and by doing it, I ostracise myself from this great world of songs to which I was born.1921 March 18, Rabindranath Tagore, “New York, March 18, 1921”, in C[harles] F[reer] A[ndrews], editor, Letters from Abroad, Madras, Tamil...
  • Children ostracize other children in the playground, choosing carefully who they wish to play with.2007, Kipling D. Williams, Jonathan Gerber, “Ostracism: The Making of the Ignored and Excluded Mind”, in Petra Hauf, Friedrich Försterling...
  • He then used his influence to prevent anyone from condemning or ostracizing the girl.2015 March, Jimmy Carter, “The Road to Progress”, in A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, New York, N.Y.: Simon &...

More sentences with ostracize

  • They were ostracized for breaking the blue wall of silence about police misconduct.From the entry break silence
  • He was branded as a deviant and ostracized.From the entry deviant
  • Dissenters, when they speak out, are hounded, ostracized and sometimes even forced from their jobs.2022 February 18, Jamelle Bouie, “Opinion: You Just Can’t Tell the Truth About America Anymore”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry pulse
  • Some suspect that gay men are using this site and attempt to ostracize them from it.2020, Joshua A. Segalewitz, "'You Don’t Understand... It’s Not About Virginity': Sexual Markets, Identity Construction, and Violent…. From the entry mentalcel
  • No one here is calling for Joe Peacock to be ostracized.2012 July 28, Gulliver [username], “Who Gets To Be a Geek? Anyone Who Wants to Be”, in Whatever, WordPress, Comments. From the entry shadowbox
  • Now the editor deems it necessary to ostracize a whole congregation in an editorial.1980 November/December, William Coulter, “Feedback”, in In Unity, Los Angeles, Calif.: the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community…. From the entry penpersonship
  • According to the BfV, the JA promotes an ethno-nationalist worldview that ostracizes anyone who is not a native, white German.2023 May 24, Nadine Schmidt and Sophie Tanno, “Germany intensifies scrutiny of far-right AfD, labeling its youth wing ‘extremist’”, in CNN. From the entry worldview
  • If there was sufficient interest, the Athenians could vote once per year to ostracize someone, exiling him from Athens for a period of 10 years.2009, Debra Hamel, “Citizen Tyrants”, in Military History. From the entry ostracon
  • To vote, Athenians scratched the name of the person to be ostracized on potsherds, broken pottery pieces called ostraka—hence the name of the procedure.2009, Debra Hamel, “Citizen Tyrants”, in Military History. From the entry ostracon
  • The ability to label men as “creepy” is just one privilege that women enjoy, and a constant source of fear of ostracizing that all men must fear in our society.2011, Showdown: #MenCallMeThings versus The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics, We Hunted The Mammoth. From the entry creep-shame

Meaning of ostracize

  1. verb To ban a person from a city for five or ten years through the procedure of ostracism.
  2. verb To exclude a person from a community or from society by not communicating with them or by refusing to acknowledge their presence; to refuse to associate with or talk to; to shun.

Full definition of ostracize

Questions about ostracize in a sentence

How do you use ostracize in a sentence?
Ostracize is used as a verb. For example: “They were ostracized for breaking the blue wall of silence about police misconduct.”
What is a short sentence with ostracize?
“He was branded as a deviant and ostracized.”
What does ostracize mean?
Ostracize means to ban a person from a city for five or ten years through the procedure of ostracism.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ostracize (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use ostracize in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ostracize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.