Sanction orignally means law
The English word sanction originates from the French word of the same spelling which means legislation or law. Until the end of the 1500s it was used widely in a religious context with sanctions referred to in terms of the commandments or divine law.
Only gradually was sanction used as a legal term meaning a penalty for not complying with social law. In the 1700s and 1800s sanction was mainly used in this legal context.
Sanction comes into its own as a weapon
The idea of sanction as an economic weapon was first used in English after the First World War. The 1925 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature and one of the co-founders of the London School of Economics George Bernard Shaw wrote a pamphlet Peace conference hints in 1919 in which he described “Such widely advocated and little thought-out ‘sanctions’ as the outlawry and economic boycott of a recalcitrant nation”. It did not take long for the word to move out of inverted commas.
Just how effective sanctions are is a matter of debate. Key examples of economic sanctions are the United States against Cuba, or the United Nations against Iraq, South Africa and Zimbabwe or the current sanctions being imposed against Russia.
