Thread by @KoryStamper

"Quarantine" has a pretty complicated etymology. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR ALL ABOUT IT, YES YOU WOULD, SETTLE IN, MY NERDS

1/13

The kind of quarantine that we're all thinking of originated in Venice in the 1300s: ships had sit at anchor for 40 days before coming into port to prevent the spread of the plague. In Venetian, this was called "quarentena,” which originally meant “40 days.” 2/13

The word “quarentena” predates the practice of quarantine, though. It’s actually a Late Latin word that comes ultimately from the Classical Latin word “quadraginta,” which means “forty.” That Late Latin word “quarentena” originally referred to another sad 40 days: Lent. 3/13

The Catholic Church was a Big Deal, and so the Latin “quarentena” spread abroad and developed a few other religious meanings: the place where Jesus fasted for (you guessed it) 40 days, or a period of penance (which happened to usually last—wait for it—40 days). 4/14

So when the plague just showed up in Italy on the 14th-century equivalent of a Carnival Cruise line and the Venetians were like, “HELLS NO, TIMEOUT FOR YOU” they already had a handy word that meant “40 days” to give to this practice of forcing ships offshore. 5/14

You’ll remember I said that the Latin “quarentena” spread abroad. It did! The 12th-c French Frenchified it into “quarantaine” and used it with its Jesus-y meanings. They brought “quarantaine” to English shores in the 15th c (because they ran England, that is why). 6/14

Even though the plague lasted for 300 years, it wasn’t until the 1500s that London started enacting rules to prevent the spread of the plague. Forced isolation was one of those rules. (Also: bell ringing, white sticks.) BUT: we did not initially call this “quarantine”! 7/13

(I can't count, shut up) If you had the plague, your house would be “shut up” and you’d be stuck inside for a minimum of 40 days. Or you were sent to a “pesthouse,” where you got to die with strangers, supes fun! That was our terminology. So whence “quarantine”? 8/13

Remember the Venetian quarantine from the 14th c? That became standard operating procedure as the plague swept Europe. Nearly every affected port city adopted the Venetian model, and Italian/French modeled the name of this procedure off the Latin “quarentena.” 9/13

It’s a surprisingly useful word if everyone around you is dying! By 1630, Italians broadened "quarentena"'s meaning to refer to isolation to avoid contagion. Trade continued. The continental French adopted this meaning in 1635. Words, like disease, spread through contact. 10/13

Our first written use of “quarantine” in English is 1649, from a sailor describing his “Quarantaine” outside of Toulon, a French city. By 1663, Samuel Pepys notes that ships are kept “in quarantine” in England. We've given the Italian word a familiar French-ish form. 11/13

Three years later, the Great Plague of London hit, and hoo boy, did this French-out-of-Italian-out-of-Latin word “quarantine” come in handy! By the late 1600s, English had adopted the meaning of “quarantine” that the Italians and French had already given it in 1630 & 1635. 12/13

And that’s how an English word that is originally from French is actually more Italian than French in just *one* of its meanings, but it’s all Latin so who cares in the end. YAY, YOU'VE MADE IT TO THE END, GO WASH YOUR HANDS! 13/13

(If you want more this etymology jawn, I have a dumb book you should buy! penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530504/w…

And seriously, wash your hands! WASH THEM. NOW. AGAIN. LADY MACBETH THAT SHIT.)