QUARANTINE

Quarantine

Quarantine "is used to separate and restrict the movement of well persons who may have been exposed to a communicable disease to see if they become ill." The term is often erroneously used synonymously with isolation, which is "to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy." The word comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning forty, which is the number of days ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic. Quarantine can be applied to humans, but also to animals of various kinds, and both as part of border control as well ...

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quarantine

Noun

  1. A desert in which Christ fasted for 40 days according to the Bible
  2. A grace period of 40 days during which a widow has the right to remain in her dead husband's home, regardless of the inheritance

Noun (etymology 2)

  1. A sanitary measure to prevent the spread of a contagious plague by isolating those believed to be infected.
  2. Such official detention of a ship at or off port due to suspicion that it may be carrying a contagious disease aboard.
  3. A certain place for isolating persons suspected of suffering from a contagious disease.
  4. A certain period of time during which a person is isolated to determine whether they've been infected with a contagious disease.
  5. Any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.
  6. A record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.
  7. A place where email messages or other files which are suspected of harboring a virus are stored.

Verb

  1. To retain in obligatory isolation or separation, as a sanitary measure to prevent the spread of contagious disease.
  2. To put in isolation as if by quarantine


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: quarantine
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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