taboo
Excluded or forbidden from use, approach or mention.
Adjective
- Excluded or forbidden from use, approach or mention.
- Incest is a taboo subject in most soap operas.
- Sweets and fats are strictly taboo in my home.
- Culturally forbidden.
Origin
Borrowed from Tongan tapu (“prohibited, sacred”), from Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu, from Proto-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian *tambu. Doublet of kapu. First attested in c. 1777. The p in the Tongan source was misheard as b.
Forms
Derived
Noun
- An inhibition or ban that results from social custom or emotional aversion.
- It is true indeed that a taboo - in order to be a proper taboo - must not rest in the general mind on argument or reason. - 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.,...
- So among the Alfoors of the island of Buru it is taboo to mention the names of parents and parents-in-law, or even to speak of common objects by words which resemble these names in sound. - 1922, James Frazer, The...
- The sharp differentiation of the sexes in our culture was shaped most probably by monogamy and monosexuality and their tabus. - 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 213:
- Something which may not be used, approached or mentioned because it is sacred.
Forms
Derived
nontaboo taboo avoidance taboo deformation tabooer tabooise tabooish tabooism tabooist tabooistic tabooize tabooless tabooness
Verb
- To mark as taboo.
Synonyms: tabooize
- To ban or prohibit.
- They lunched, but if the subject of Carrados had been tabooed the meal would have been a silent one. - 1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados:
- To avoid.