bar

Imagine a heavy wooden pole laid across a doorway. That pole is Medieval Latin barra — a bar. Nothing gets through until you lift it. From this single image the whole physical family grows.

The pole itself becomes bar: a rod of metal or wood, a crossbar, a toolbar. Lay several together and you get a barricade — a street blocked with whatever is at hand. Build a permanent one and it is a barrier: a wall, a fence, or figuratively a language barrier, a trade barrier. In an old courtroom, a literal railing — the bar — separated the judges and lawyers from the public; to this day a lawyer 'called to the bar' has crossed that railing into the profession. And the long counter where drinks are served is also a bar — originally the barrier between customer and bottles.

The most surprising child of barra is embarrass. Take em- (to put in) + barra (a bar): to embarrass someone was literally to put a bar in their path — to block, hamper, entangle them. The physical obstacle slid into a mental one: when you are blocked and flustered in front of others, you feel embarrassed. Embargo comes through Spanish embargar from the same root: to bar ships from sailing — an official block on trade.

Now the second strand. Late Latin bannum (from a Germanic word) meant a public proclamation — and especially a proclamation that forbids. A lord could issue a ban. So ban means to officially forbid: a smoking ban, a banned book. To banish is to proclaim someone out — to drive them into exile. Contraband is contra- (against) + bannum (the ban): goods traded against the prohibition — smuggled goods. A banner was originally the standard under which a lord's ban was announced — the flag of his proclamation.

The two strands shake hands in abandon. Old French à bandon meant 'at (someone's) decree, at one's mercy' — bandon being the bannum, the power to command. To put something à bandon was to surrender it to another's control, to give it up entirely — hence to abandon. And banal? It once meant 'belonging to the ban' — the lord's communal mill or oven that everyone was compelled to use. Because everyone used it, banal drifted to mean 'common to all,' then 'commonplace,' then 'dull and unoriginal.'

So the rule of the family: a barra blocks you in space; a bannum forbids you by decree. Both leave you on the wrong side of a line you cannot cross.