quarantine

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   isolation to prevent the spread of infectious disease, sometimes forced by law

   My dog had to go into isolation when we moved country.

2. 2
   verb

   to place into enforced isolation, as for medical reasons

   My dog was quarantined before it could live in our new country.

3. 3
   noun

   A period of 40 days, particularly

   Now the Question seems to lye thus, where lay the Seeds of the Infection all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the Distemper did not come immediately by Contagion from Body to Body, or if it did, then a Body may be capable to continue infected, without the Disease discovering itself, many Days, nay Weeks together, even not a Quarantine of Days only, but Soixantine, not only 40 Days but 60 Days or longer.

4. 4
   noun

   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.

   The tourists were put in quarantine to ensure none of them would be able to spread the plague.

5. 5
   noun

   A similar period, instance, or state of rigidly enforced or self-enforced detention or isolation.

   Now treating Sandwich seems the fittest choice For Spain, there to condole and to rejoyce: He meets the French, but to avoid all harms, Slips into Groine, Embassies bears no Arms. There let him languish a long Quarrentine, And ne're to England come, till he be clean.

6. 6
   noun

   A place where such isolation is enforced, a lazaret.

   They bring wood, millet, rye, barley, and a little wheat to the quarantine to barter with the Cossaks for salt.

7. 7
   noun

   A blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.

   When a great power establishes diplomatic quarantine against them it is well not to go too far on a course on which they appear to be embarking with a light heart.

8. 8
   noun

   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.

   Also included is Canary, a ‘quarantine’ program for use as a sample to test for a virus by pairing it with new or suspect programs.

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.