banner
Pluralbanners
Verbbanners, bannering, bannered
Pluralbanners
Formsbanners, bannering, bannered
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- 3A national or royal flag, or one used by a military commander.
The nation's banner was raised over the captured fort.
Heralds carried the commander's banner at the front of the column.
Note
The flag the whole family descends from. It came into English through Middle English baner and Old French baniere, a word of Germanic origin related to band. The troop, the cause and the newspaper title all grew from this cloth. A banner is raised, carried or hung, as the Atreides green and black one hangs limply from its staff in Frank Herbert's Dune (1965).
- 4An advertisement on a web page or television, usually a graphic or animation placed above or alongside the main content.
A flashing banner for the sale ran along the top of the homepage.
The broadcast carried a banner promoting the network's evening lineup.
Similarad, advertisement
Note
Advertising borrowed the word from the sign strung across a street. On a web page it is a strip of graphic or animation that sits above or beside the content the visitor came for, and on television it runs alongside the broadcast. Like the cloth sign, its purpose is to be seen in passing.
- 5Exceptional and very good, used especially of a period or performance that far exceeds the usual standard.
Sales figures confirmed a banner quarter for the small business.
The athlete capped a banner career with one final gold medal.
Similarrecord, outstanding, exceptional, stellar, bumper
Note
An adjective that stands before its noun: a banner year, a banner achievement. It has no comparative or superlative, so nothing is more banner than anything else. In 1853 the New-Hampshire Missionary Society called the year just closed its banner year, having raised more than ever before. The image is of a result worth flying a flag for.
- 6A cause, purpose, or movement that people rally around and openly champion.
Activists from many groups united under a single banner of reform.
She carried the banner of public health for three decades.
Similarcause, flag, standard, torch
Note
A figurative extension that lives mostly in one phrase: under the banner of, as when people make their case under the banner of environmentalism. The image gathers people behind a cause the way troops gathered behind the commander's flag. Carrying the banner for something is the related picture of being its most visible champion.
- 7The title of a newspaper as printed across the top of its front page; the nameplate or masthead.
The editor approved a new banner for the Sunday edition.
Readers instantly recognized the paper by its distinctive banner.
Note
Newsroom vocabulary for the paper's own name across the top of the front page, which also goes by nameplate or masthead. Keep it apart from a banner headline, the full-width headline over the lead story, which is what the newsroom verb produces. One names the paper itself; the other announces the news.
- 8The chief standard or flag of an individual knight.
The knight's banner bore three golden lions on a red field.
Squires guarded the banner while the knight fought on foot.
Note
Heraldry keeps the most personal sense: the chief flag of one knight, usually square or oblong and charged with his own arms. A knight entitled to lead others under his banner ranked as a knight banneret, above an ordinary bachelor knight. The flag therefore marked command as well as identity.
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- 10To display a story as a banner headline running across the top of a page.
The paper bannered the scandal in two-inch type the next morning.
Editors chose to banner the verdict above the fold.
Note
A newsroom verb that takes the story or headline as its object. In Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman's No Time To Think (2008), the Drudge Report is described as bannering the headline "Cheney in Charge?". It inflects regularly, as bannered and bannering. The choice it records is editorial: running something full width across the top marks it as the day's biggest news.
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- 12A subdivision of a military force or an administrative region.
The empire organized its frontier troops into banners.
Every banner kept its own records and paid its own taxes.
Similardivision
- 13An administrative division in Inner Mongolia and Tuva, created during the Qing dynasty, when parts of Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang were likewise organized into banners.
Each banner was governed by a hereditary Mongol noble.
The Qing court redrew the borders of several banners along the frontier.
Note
A term from Qing administration that survives in modern place names. As part of a name it is capitalized, as in Hanggin Rear Banner in Bayannur, Inner Mongolia. Used generically it stays lowercase, as when Christopher P. Atwood's Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (2004) places the writer Rinchinkhorlo in Khüriye banner. It is a specific case of an administrative subdivision.
- 14A person who bans something, prohibiting its use or availability.
Free-speech groups have labeled the governor a serial banner, citing the dozens of plays and concerts he has prohibited.
Librarians point out that the book banners have read almost none of the titles they want pulled from the shelves.
Similarcensor
Note
A separate word that only shares the flag's spelling: it is ban plus the agent ending -er, as a runner is one who runs. Its plural, banners, is identical to the flag's plural. It therefore reads clearly only when the thing banned is named, as in book banners, or the banners of some of the books on a list, as The Australian Library Journal put it in 1963.
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Origins
From Middle English 'baner', from Old French 'baniere' (Modern French 'bannière'), of Germanic origin.
Formed from 'ban' with the suffix '-er'.