English▸ noun [mass noun] a state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that may have been exposed to infectious disease are placed:
horses entering the country must stay in quarantine longer
[count noun] a six-week quarantine
[as modifier] quarantine laws.
▸ verb [with object] place (a person or animal) in quarantine in order to prevent the spread of an infectious disease:
I quarantine all new fish for one month
they had to quarantine infected households.
▪ [no object] remain apart from others for a period of time in order to prevent the transmission of an infectious disease to which one may have been exposed:
we are seeing exponential growth in new cases because people failed to quarantine after travelling abroad.
– ORIGIN late 15th century (in sense ‘place where Jesus fasted for forty days’): from medieval Latin quarentena and Anglo-Norman French quarenteine, quarenteinne. The modern sense is from Italian quarantina ‘forty days’, from quaranta ‘forty’, and dates from the mid 17th century.