ostracism (n.)
Ostracism is being shut out by the group you belong to. The word comes from the Greek ostrakon, a potsherd: a piece of broken pottery.1
An Athenian who wanted a man banished for ten years scratched his name on a sherd and handed it in. Broken pottery was everywhere and cost nothing, which is why the vote was taken on it.12
Thousands of those sherds have come out of the Agora and the Kerameikos, names still legible on them, most of them from refuse dumps.2
The procedure ended and the word kept only the exclusion. The object dropped out of it: a piece of rubbish with a name scratched on it.1
He faced ostracism from the whole village.