{"id":1154,"date":"2020-03-12T17:46:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T21:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2020-03-12T17:46:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T21:46:01","slug":"word-of-the-week-quarantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2020\/03\/12\/word-of-the-week-quarantine\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Quarantine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2020\/03\/quarantine.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1155\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2020\/03\/quarantine.jpg\" alt=\"quarantine station 1957\" width=\"700\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a>Here we are, self-isolating as the university gets ready to resume learning, by distance and technology. Even if you are not in a medical facility or ill, you are effectively in quarantine.<\/p>\n<p>I was curious, in these troubled times, about the origin of our word, in both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/155959?result=1&amp;rskey=HsGb6Q&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">noun<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/155960?result=2&amp;rskey=HsGb6Q&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">verb<\/a> forms. The OED entries reveal that the verb is a 19th-Century back formation (without any changes) from the noun. That older word, a borrowing from both French and Latin, dates to the 15th Century and probably earlier to pre-Gutenberg times.<\/p>\n<p>Obsolete meanings from the OED refer to religious fasts, including the 40 days of fasting Jesus endured. More modern uses are quite familiar as COVID-19 works its evil magic, such as &#8220;isolation imposed on newly arrived travellers in order to prevent the spread of disease.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As with many useful words, this one gets employed metaphorically, for legal, technological, and other purposes. May your quarantines all be short and our return to campus speedy.<\/p>\n<p>Ill or healthy, I can still type, and this blog will soldier on as we cope with the emergency.<\/p>\n<p>Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Public health station, New Orleans, 1957, courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quarantine#\/media\/File:PHSQuarentineStationNOLA1957.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here we are, self-isolating as the university gets ready to resume learning, by distance and technology. Even if you are not in a medical facility or ill, you are effectively in quarantine. I was curious, in these troubled times, about the origin of our word, in both noun and verb forms. The OED entries reveal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2020\/03\/12\/word-of-the-week-quarantine\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Quarantine<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405,87399,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-iC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}