quarantine

Meanings

1. A period of 40 days, particularly
2. The 40-day period during which a widow is entitled to remain in her deceased husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.
3. The 40-day period of isolation required after 1448 at Venice's lazaret to avoid renewed outbreaks of the bubonic plague and identical policies in other locations.
4. A 40-day period formerly imposed by the French king upon warring nobles during which they were forbidden from exacting revenge or continuing to fight.
5. A period, instance, or state of isolation from the general public or from native livestock and flora enacted to prevent the spread of any contagious disease.
6. A similar period, instance, or state of rigidly enforced or self-enforced detention or isolation.
7. A place where such isolation is enforced, a lazaret.
8. A blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.
9. An isolation of one program, drive, computer, etc. from the rest of a computer network to limit the damage from a bug, computer virus, etc.
10. The program, drive, computer, etc. thus isolated.

1. To place into isolation to prevent the spread of any contagious disease.
2. To enter or stay in quarantine, particularly to self-quarantine to avoid an epidemic disease.
3. To impose a quarantine, to establish quarantine regulations.
4. Synonym of isolate more generally.
5. Synonym of restrict.

1. Alternative letter-case form of Quarantine: the Mount of Temptation where Jesus Christ supposedly fasted for 40 days, Jebel Quruntul near Jericho.

1. Synonym of Mount of Temptation.

Etymology

From Medieval Latin quarentena and quarentīna (“40-day period, Lent”) via Middle English quarentine, Norman quarenteine, French quarenteine, and Italian quarantina, via proposed Late Latin *quaranta + -ēna (forming distributive adjectives), 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.

Translations