QUARANTINE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Quarantine

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/kwˈɔrəntˌin/ Listen

noun

Quarantine n.

A space of forty days; used of Lent.

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. Note: Quarantine is now applied also to any forced stoppage of travel or communication on account of malignant contagious disease, on land as well as by sea.

(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.

Quarantine flag, 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.

verb

Quarantine v. t. (past & past part. quarantined; pres. part. quarantining) 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.

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Etymology of 'Quarantine'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Quarantine" Quotes from Famous Books

... boys had considerable to be proud of; and from that day until school finally began, after the trustees had declared the quarantine broken, each member of the Silver Fox Patrol was always the center of an admiring crowd of ...

— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... 8th of May, 1847, the Urania, from Cork, with several hundred immigrants on board, a large proportion of them sick and dying of the ship-fever, was put into quarantine at Grosse Isle, thirty miles below Quebec. This was the first of the plague- smitten ships of Ireland which that year sailed up the St. Lawrence. But, before the first week of June, as many as eighty- four ships, of various tonnage, ...

— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... to the confused problems of some larger centre of population and the presence of a more intricate conflict would be marked by roughly smeared notices of "Quarantine" or "Strangers Shot," or by a string of decaying plunderers dangling from the telephone poles at the roadside. About Oxford big boards were put on the roofs warning all air wanderers off with the single ...

— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... about the port, since it was known the lugger intended to come into the bay, Ghita and 'Maso alone remained on watch, after the vessel was anchored. A loud hail had been given by those intrusted with the execution of the quarantine laws, the great physical bugbear and moral mystification of the Mediterranean; and the questions put had been answered in a way to satisfy all scruples for the moment. The "From whence came ye?" asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered by "Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and ...

— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... included books on Dogs, Cats and Bees (!) though the inclusion of the latter reminds one of the story of the imported tortoise, which the customs officials (after much debate) decided was an insect, and therefore not liable to quarantine! Then there are books of sporting memoirs, sporting dictionaries, sport in particular countries, as well as works which treat of Maypoles and Mumming, Festivals, and ...

— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

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