Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 30. The word origin today is
quarantine. Okay. Let's take a look at the note. A quarantine is a situation in
which people and animals that are suspected of having a disease are kept
apart from other people or animals for a period of time. So the disease is not
spread. Of course, you've probably heard this. You know of course, any of the big
diseases that went around like SARS or chicken flu or whatever or Bird Flu years
ago. You've seen that some people were quarantined for a short while especially
like at the airport or or whatever. So this is the origin of this word. All right.
Let's continue. The origin of quarantine goes all the way back to the 14th
century in Europe when the Black Plague spread throughout all of Europe killing
off 30% of the European population. Yeah. I remember reading about that. That's
amazing that it really had such an effect that it actually killed off 30%
of the population back in those days. Today, we get nervous a few hundred
people die of a disease. This knocked off 30 percent of the entire population.
Let's continue. In order to try to control the spread of the disease in
Venice, Italy, they forced ships to be in isolation for
40 days before allowing anyone on board to leave the ship. In Italian, it was
referred to as quaranta , quaranta giorni. All right. That means 40 days in Italian. So
quaranta ,quaranta is 40 and giorni is days. So , so now you can see where the
beginning of the word comes from. It comes from ...quarantine came from quaranta,
quarenta in Italian meaning 40. All right. Let's continue. There are documents that
prove the original period of.... a period of time the passengers had to stay on the
ship was 30 days, and it was called trentine.
Okay. Yeah I think they started at 30 then they extended it to 40. You know,
because I guess they wanted to be even safer. So they took the tine in
trentine . Okay. Together with the quaranta in 40. And here's where we
got quarantine. This is where quarantine came from. Okay. So the modern word formed
from quaranta in 40 and the tine in Trentine is probably how they pronounced
it in Italian at that time. So now you know this is where quarantine actually
originally came from. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for
your time. Bye-bye.