banner

UK/ˈbænə/US/ˈbænɚ/

nounC13 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,346 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: banners

A banner is a long strip of cloth with words or a design on it, held up where people can read it. Two marchers carrying one between poles at the front of a crowd; a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner taped across the kitchen wall.

Online, the banner is the wide advertisement across the top of a page — banner ads, and the banner blindness that makes readers skip past them without seeing them. A newspaper's banner headline runs the full width of the front page. 'Under the banner of' means acting in the name of something: a march under the banner of free speech. In medieval war and in fantasy, a lord's banner is the flag his men follow, which is where bannermen and banner-bearer come from. American English adds 'a banner year', meaning an outstandingly good one.

Definitions of banner

1nounbannerA long piece of cloth carrying words or a design, hung up or carried.C1~2%
“Protesters unrolled a banner across the bridge.”
2nounmarketingA wide advertisement strip across the top of a web page.B1~9%
“The site pays its way with banner ads.”
3nounflagA flag standing for an army, a lord, or a cause.C1~89%
“The knights rode out under their lord's banner.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense (8 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

under the banner of — acting in the name of a cause or a group

Also practised as

nounA wide advertisement strip across a page.

Where it comes from

Middle English baner came from Old French baniere, and behind that stands a Germanic word from the same root as band. The banner was the cloth that showed which band of men you belonged to — a sign to gather under, centuries before it was ever an advertisement.

Middle English
baner
English, today
banner

From Middle English baner. From Middle English baner, from Old French baniere (Modern bannière), of gem - origin. More at band.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

banner in the wild

After the Ten Great Campaigns of the mid-18th century the quality of the banner armies declined.
Eight Banners
A banner is an administrative division of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China, equivalent to a county-level administrative division.
Banners of Inner Mongolia
Banners were first used during the Qing dynasty, which organized the Mongols into banners, except those who belonged to the Eight Banners.
Banners of Inner Mongolia
The flag is often called "the red flag" (al bayrak), and is referred to as "the red banner" (al sancak) in the Turkish national anthem.
Flag of Turkey
The service was founded by attorney David Goodfriend under the banner of the Sports Fans Coalition.
Locast

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

banner ad

Definitions of banner

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense (8 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.