ban

Prohibition. The word originally meant ‘a public proclamation in the territory under the jurisdiction of a feudal lord’. That sense is retained in the word ‘banns’ for a proclamation of marriage.

A third meaning was the feudal summons by the monarch calling up vassals for military service.

The word was introduced by the Franks into French and from there into English in the medieval period. Another specialized meaning deriving from that of ‘proclamation’ is ‘sentence of outlawry’, first occurring in the 17th century. The modern, more general sense of ‘prohibition’ dates only from the 19th century.

The corresponding French and English adjective banal referred to communal services provided by the feudal lord, which the common people were obliged to use, for payment, such as ovens and mills. This led, via the meaning ‘in common use’, to the modern sense ‘commonplace, trivial’.