Many of you responded positively to the linguistics of “thread three: hiraeth”, so I thought I would incorporate some etymology here.
Here is the etymology of a word we’ve all become intimately acquainted with in the past few years:
The word “quarantine” comes from the Venetian dialect of “quaranta giorni” in Italian or “forty days”. During the 14th century, when the Black Death killed over 200 million people in Europe, ships were directed to nearby islands for a period of forty days in order to halt the spread of the plague. The forty days was originally thirty, “trentine,” yet the isolation period was extended to document the inevitable spread.
“Quarantine”, today, has much salience, yet it was once just a descriptor of time (hi, penny post #8).
What salience does “quarantine” have for you? How has this salience changed pre and post pandemic?
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Thread Five: Quarantine
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Many of you responded positively to the linguistics of “thread three: hiraeth”, so I thought I would incorporate some etymology here.
Here is the etymology of a word we’ve all become intimately acquainted with in the past few years:
The word “quarantine” comes from the Venetian dialect of “quaranta giorni” in Italian or “forty days”. During the 14th century, when the Black Death killed over 200 million people in Europe, ships were directed to nearby islands for a period of forty days in order to halt the spread of the plague. The forty days was originally thirty, “trentine,” yet the isolation period was extended to document the inevitable spread.
“Quarantine”, today, has much salience, yet it was once just a descriptor of time (hi, penny post #8).
What salience does “quarantine” have for you? How has this salience changed pre and post pandemic?