Other forms: quarantines
Quarantine is staying separated from everyone so an illness cannot spread. Go into quarantine.
It applies to the well who may be carrying something, where isolation applies to the sick. Quarantine works only if it lasts longer than the illness takes to show itself.
1nounquarantineStaying separated from everyone so an illness cannot spread.
“The quarantine lasted ten days and felt like a month.”
quarantine is a measure.
Also accepted in games: isolation
From Italian and Medieval Latin for a period of forty days — quarantīna, from Latin quadrāgintā, forty. Venice held arriving ships offshore for exactly that long before letting anyone come ashore.
Latin
*quaranta
Italian
quarantina
French
quarenteine
Norman
quarenteine
Middle English
quarentine
Medieval Latin
quarentena
English, today
quarantine
Built from
From Medieval Latin quarentena and quarentīna (“40-day period, Lent”) via Middle English quarentine, Norman quarenteine, French quarenteine, and Italian quarantina, via proposed Latin quaranta + -ēna, from Latin quadrāgintā (“four tens, 40”). In reference to French politics, calque of French quarantaine after edicts of Louis IX. In reference to a severance of political relations, popularized by the Roosevelt administration's 1937 approach to the Axis powers and the later Kennedy administration's 1962 approach to Cuba during the missile crisis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA