Ostracize comes from ostrakon, the Greek word for a shell or a broken piece of pot. Once a year Athens could decide to send one citizen away for ten years, and each voter scratched a name on a potsherd, the scrap paper of a city where pots were always breaking. The exile kept his property and could come back when the ten years were up. Archaeologists found about 190 of these sherds dumped in a well on the north slope of the Acropolis, every one with the name Themistocles, and the handwriting comes down to around fourteen people. Nobody knows for certain why: helpers for voters who couldn’t write, perhaps, or a campaign. Either way the word kept the pottery and lost the part where you could come home.