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  • 2020-04-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Does 'Quarantine' Originate from the Word 'Forty' (Days) in Italian? (en)
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  • During the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of 2020, many Americans first became acquainted with the phrase social distancing, a term referring to the practice of people avoiding gathering in groups and maintaining physical space between themselves in public settings (in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19). The words isolation and quarantine also saw an increase in usage during the pandemic, but although they are often used synonymously, they have distinctly different meanings, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained on its website: Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick. Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick. Thus, persons who have contracted COVID-19 and are staying at home in order to avoid spreading the illness to others are properly said to be self-isolating rather than self-quarantining. Nonetheless, the common use of quarantine during the pandemic got some people wondering where that word came from, a question one meme attempted to answer: The explanation offered in this meme is largely correct, although in its brevity it omits some of the more interesting etymological background. The roots of quarantine lay in the multiple outbreaks of bubonic plague (popularly known as the Black Death) that hit Europe beginning in 1347 and killed an estimated one-third of the population. According to a 2002 article published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, city officials around the Mediterranean seaport of Ragusa mandated in 1377 that persons who sought to enter the city after traveling from plague areas must first remain in isolation for a 30-day period known as a trentino (from the Italian word trenta, meaning thirty): Over the next several decades, other European cities adopted similar measures, and eventually the isolation period was extended from 30 days to 40 days, called a quarantino (from the Italian word quaranta, meaning forty). Why the isolation period increased to 40 days is unknown, and several different theories have been advanced to explain it: (en)
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