Showing posts with label Quarantine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quarantine. Show all posts

May 8, 2020

Wordology, Quarantine

You have probably heard the word quarantine too often in the recent COVID-19 coverage. It derives from the Latin word for forty.

The word was coined in Venice to describe the forty day period ships had to be isolated before they would be allowed to dock. The Venetian word for forty is quaranta, which has a Latin root.