ban [OE] In Old English this meant ‘to summon by popular proclamation’. The word is Germanic and also passed into French where it had the sense ‘proclamation, summons, banishment’. This lies behind abandon [LME] based on the Old French phrase a bandon ‘at one’s disposal, under one’s jurisdiction’; and banal [M18th] which originally related to feudal service and meant ‘compulsory’. From this came a notion of ‘common to everyone’ and so ‘ordinary and everyday’. The marriage banns [ME] read in church also come from the sense ‘proclamation’. Bandit [L16th] comes from Italian bandito a ‘banned person’, and banish [LME] comes from the same root.