Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A condition, period of time, or place in which a person, animal, plant, vehicle, or amount of material suspected of carrying an infectious agent is kept in confinement or isolated in an effort to prevent disease from spreading.
  • noun An action resulting in such a condition.
  • noun An action to isolate another nation, such as a blockade of its ports or a severance of diplomatic or trade relations.
  • noun The condition of being isolated by such an action.
  • noun Computers The isolation of data or data transmissions in order to keep viruses, worms, or other malware from infecting a computer or computer network.
  • transitive verb To isolate in quarantine.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Aperiod of forty days.
  • noun A term, originally of forty days, but now of varying length according to the exigencies of the case, during which a ship arriving in port and known or suspected to be infected with a malignant contagious disease is obliged to for-bear all intercourse with the place where she arrives.
  • noun The enforced isolation of individuals and certain objects coming, whether by sea or by land, from a place where dangerous communicable disease is presumably or actually present, with a view to limiting the spread of the malady.
  • noun Hence, by extension: The isolation of any person suffering or convalescing from acute contagious disease.
  • noun The isolation of a dwelling or of a town or district in which a contagious disease exists.
  • noun A place or station where quarantine is enforced.
  • noun The restriction within limits awarded to naval cadets as a punishment.
  • To put under quarantine, in any sense of that word.
  • Figuratively, to isolate, as by authority.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A space of forty days; -- used of Lent.
  • noun Specifically, the term, originally of forty days, during which a ship arriving in port, and suspected of being infected a malignant contagious disease, is obliged to forbear all intercourse with the shore; hence, such restraint or inhibition of intercourse; also, the place where infected or prohibited vessels are stationed.
  • noun (Eng. Law) The period of forty days during which the widow had the privilege of remaining in the mansion house of which her husband died seized.
  • noun a yellow flag hoisted at the fore of a vessel or hung from a building, to give warning of an infectious disease; -- called also the yellow jack, and yellow flag.
  • transitive verb To compel to remain at a distance, or in a given place, without intercourse, when suspected of having contagious disease; to put under, or in, quarantine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A sanitary measure to prevent the spread of a contagious plague by isolating those believed to be infected.
  • noun Such official detention of a ship at or off port due to suspicion that it may be carrying a contagious disease aboard.
  • noun A certain place for isolating persons suspected of suffering from a contagious disease.
  • noun A certain period of time during which a person is isolated to determine whether they've been infected with a contagious disease.
  • noun by extension Any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.
  • noun A record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.
  • noun computing A place where email messages or other files which are suspected of harboring a virus are stored.
  • verb To retain in obligatory isolation or separation, as a sanitary measure to prevent the spread of contagious disease.
  • verb To put in isolation as if by quarantine
  • noun A desert in which Christ fasted for 40 days according to the Bible
  • noun 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

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun isolation to prevent the spread of infectious disease
  • noun enforced isolation of patients suffering from a contagious disease in order to prevent the spread of disease
  • verb place into enforced isolation, as for medical reasons

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian quarantena, from Venetian dialectal Italian, quarantine of a ship (so called because the length of the quarantine was typically forty days), from Old Italian quarantina, period of forty days (such as one designated for fasting or penance), from quaranta, forty, from Latin quadrāgintā; see kwetwer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Directly from Latin quadraginta ("forty")

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Italian quarantina ("forty"), from quarantina giorni ("forty days"), the period Venetians customarily kept ships from plague-ridden countries waiting for off port), from quaranta ("forty"), from Latin quadraginta ("forty")

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Examples

  • Anything in quarantine is safely segregated from the rest of your computer, it cannot run from there, so it can do no harm.

    Archive 2008-06-01 2008

  • Anything in quarantine is safely segregated from the rest of your computer, it cannot run from there, so it can do no harm.

    Malware: The Difference Between Quarantine and Delete 2008

  • The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • In my view, establishing what he called a quarantine, what the world thought of as a blockade, and preventing if you will the Soviet Union from placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, that was certainly self-defense, it was certainly anticipatory self - defense, it was certainly preventative, and we were very close to a crisis of historic proportions.

    CNN Transcript Sep 26, 2002 2002

  • The whole Lager was placed in quarantine and so completely isolated that not even letters got through.

    History of Stalag XVIII A 2010

  • A group of U.S. students touring China are gaining an experience they had not expected - a second round in quarantine following a positive test of the H1N1 flu virus, a chaperone for the group said.

    POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: July 28, 2009 2009

Comments

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  • "Quarantine had been a regular measure ... most widely used beginning with the bubonic plague in fourteenth-century Venice.... Vessels and their cargo were initially intended to spend thirty days—trentina—in the harbor, but that later changed to forty days—quarantina."

    —Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague (New York: Berkeley Books, 2006), 40

    October 5, 2008

  • "The period of forty days during which the widow had the privilege of remaining in the mansion house of which her husband died seized." --GNU Webster's 1913

    May 12, 2012

  • Do people still die seized these days? Of mansion houses? Sounds like quite a way to go, if you're a gothic eccentric or something like that.

    May 12, 2012

  • isolation

    to prevent the spread of infectious

    disease enforced

    isolation

    of patients suffering from a contagious disease in

    order to prevent the spread of

    disease place into enforced

    isolation,

    as for medical reasons

    May 12, 2012