BANS

noun

1. Prohibition.
2. A public proclamation or edict; a summons by public proclamation. Chiefly, in early use, a summons to arms.
3. The gathering of the (French) king's vassals for war; the whole body of vassals so assembled, or liable to be summoned; originally, the same as arrière-ban: in the 16th c., French usage created a distinction between ban and arrière-ban, for which see the latter word.

verb

1. To summon; to call out.
2. To anathematize; to pronounce an ecclesiastical curse upon; to place under a ban.
3. To curse; to execrate.

noun

1. A unit measuring information or entropy based on base-ten logarithms, rather than the base-two logarithms that define the bit.