The Etymology of Contraband
Contraband is a clever Italian-Latin compound built on a Germanic root. The word arrives in English by the late 16th century from Italian contrabbando, the standard term for goods traded in violation of a state edict, particularly during the long European trade-wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Italian word descends from Medieval Latin contrabannum, formed from contra- (against) and bannum (a public proclamation or prohibition). The bannum element is itself an early-medieval Latin borrowing from a Frankish word, going back to Proto-Germanic *bannan (to summon, command, prohibit) — the same root that gives English ban and German Bann. So contraband literally means against the ban, and the ban in question is a Germanic word that travelled into Latin during the early Middle Ages and then back into the modern Romance and Germanic languages with their long tradition of trade restrictions. American English added a notable 19th-century use: enslaved people who reached Union lines in the Civil War were called contrabands, in a deliberate legal manoeuvre to refuse the South's claim of property.