My contribution is concerned with the prohibitive verb paradigm in Muher, a little-known Ethiosemitic language belonging to the Gunnän Gurage group. First, I describe the morphology of the special prohibitive paradigm and its possible historical origin. In a second step, I compare its pragmatic function vis-à-vis the “regularly” negated imperative. Contrary to earlier works on this verb form in Gunnän Gurage, the Muher prohibitive inflects for all persons, and, like the imperative/jussive, is restricted to main clauses. Although its semantics is usually negative, the involved morphology does not contain a regular negative marker. Moreover, the prohibitive also combines with the so-called main verb marker, which is otherwise limited to affirmative main clauses. In everyday discourse, the prohibitive is frequently used instead of the negated imperative, as it is a more polite way to express a prohibition. Thus, the prohibitive appears to be formally related to the apprehensive, which Treis (2018) describes as a unique paradigm for the Cushitic language Kambaata. Probably it is another, so far unknown, feature of the Highland East Cushitic–Gurage convergence area.