Other forms: isolate, isolated, isolating
Isolation is being cut off from everybody else. It covers the village at the end of the road in winter, the patient in the side room, and the person in a full office who has not had a real conversation in a month.
The last of those is the one that matters most in everyday English: isolation is as often a feeling as a fact. Two useful phrases — in isolation means considered on its own, apart from everything around it, and splendid isolation is a dry joke about being deliberately alone. The verb is isolate and the adjective isolated.
1nounisolationThe state of being alone and separated from other people.~77%
“Months of isolation had made him strange with visitors.”
synonyms: solitude, loneliness
2nounkeepingThe keeping of a sick person away from others.~21%
“The ward keeps two beds for isolation.”
3nounconsideringConsidering something entirely on its own.~2%
“Read in isolation, the sentence means the opposite.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 122 of them on a sense (18 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
From French isolé, meaning placed on an island. To be isolated is to be made into an island, and the island is still sitting inside the word.
French
isolation
English, today
isolation
1800. From French isolation, from isolé, placed on an island (thus away from other people). Equivalent to isolate + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA