Quarantine

700 hundred years ago, as disease and plague ravaged Europe, cities and states attempted in every way they could to limit the spread of disease.  Already a important hub for trading by sea, Venice was particularly hard hit as ships and sailors arrived from all over the known world, often bringing illness with them. Venice tried to limit this by imposing a 40 day waiting Period before sailors could disembark into the city, and that period of 40 days (quaranta giorni in Italian) gave us the modern English word quarantine. First enforced in Venice in 1377 and subsequently spreading to other Italian and then European cities, the word quarantine first gained use in English in the 1660s.  It only took another ten years for the word to arrive at its modern meaning of any period of extended isolation for the purpose of stopping or slowing something.

The word quarantine did exist in English prior to this, starting as early as the 1520s meaning the period a widow could remain in her husbands house after his death if he had bequethed it to someone else, in order to grieve. The word quarentyne pre-dated that use by a couple of decades to indicate the 40 days that Jesus Christ wandered in the desert, from the Latin word quadraginta meaning forty. As we passed the 40 day mark a week ago and with no end in sight, the modern meaning of quarantine holds: a period of extended time of isolation.

Wash your hands, wear a mask, maintain social distance and limit time in public as much as is practical.

Image of The Bacino de San Marco in Venice, Seen from the Guidecca by  Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto, painted around 1725-1726, in the public domain.