On November 1, 1911, Italian army lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, while flying over Libya, tosses three grenades out of his plane over a Turkish camp, effectively dropping the world’s first aerial bomb. Just eight years after the Wright brothers in America had accomplished the world’s first flight, the Kingdom of Italy sent several aircraft into Libya, […]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 1, 2025 is:

ostracize • \AH-struh-syze\  • verb

To ostracize someone is to exclude them from a group by the agreement of the group's members.

// She was ostracized by her community after refusing to sign the petition.

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Examples:

"Telling stories with affection and noodging, [comedian Sarah] Silverman has always been encouraged by her family, who embraced rather than ostracized her for revealing family secrets on the way to reaping howls of laughter." — Thelma Adams, The Boston Globe, 19 May 2025

Did you know?

In ancient Greece, citizens whose power or influence threatened the stability of the state could be exiled by a practice involving voters writing that person's name down on a potsherd—a fragment of earthenware or pottery. Those receiving enough votes would then be subject to temporary exile from the state. Ostracize comes from the Greek verb ostrakízein (itself from the noun óstrakon meaning "potsherd"), used in 5th century Athens for the action of banishing someone by way of such a vote. Someone ostracized today is not exiled, but instead is excluded from a group by the agreement of the group's members.

By Christian J. Collier