Groups can welcome people or shut them out, and they can look outward at the wide world or turn inward. This topic gives you verbs for pushing people away and adjectives for narrow and wide horizons.
Key idea
Keeping away or rejecting: shun (avoid), spurn (reject with scorn), snub (ignore coldly). Pushing out or down: ostracize (exclude from a group), banish (send away), alienate (drive away, make unfriendly), relegate (move to a lower place). Horizons: insular and parochial (narrow) versus cosmopolitan (worldly).
Some come with history. Insular comes from the Latin for island; ostracize from the pieces of broken pottery on which the citizens of ancient Athens wrote the name of someone to be sent away; cosmopolitan means “citizen of the world.”
The ten words
Common mistake
parochial in this sense means narrow-minded; it can also simply mean "of a parish," as in a parochial school. insular comes from the Latin for island.
| word | what happens | how harsh |
|---|---|---|
| shun | someone or something is avoided | quiet, steady |
| snub | someone is ignored on purpose | cold, brief |
| spurn | an offer is rejected with scorn | proud, scornful |
| ostracize | someone is shut out of a group | harsh |
| banish | someone is sent away as punishment | harshest |
| alienate | people are driven away or made unfriendly | often by accident |
| relegate | something is moved to a lower place | a step down |
Insular and parochial both mean narrow in outlook; cosmopolitan is their opposite. Parochial can also simply mean “of a parish,” as in a parochial school, with no criticism at all, so read the context.