banned

1. 1
   adjective

   Officially forbidden or prohibited by a rule, law, or authority; not permitted.

   The athlete tested positive for a banned substance and lost her medal.

   Several pesticides remain banned across most of the continent.

   Similarprohibited, forbidden, illegal, outlawed, proscribed

   Oppositepermitted, allowed, legal

   Note

   Once the participle sits before a noun, it works as a plain adjective: banned plants, a banned substance, a banned book. Unlike the past-tense verb form, it names a standing condition rather than a single act of forbidding. It can even be graded, as in more banned and most banned, when one thing is forbidden more widely or more strictly than another.

2. 2
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of ban.

   The committee banned smoking in all public buildings last year.

   Officials banned the chemical once its dangers became clear.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty here. Ban doubles its final n before -ed, and the result serves both the simple past (they banned it) and the participle used after have or be (it has been banned, it was banned). The form also carries ban's older meanings, such as to curse or to place under an ecclesiastical ban. In older writing, then, someone banned may have been cursed rather than merely barred.

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