Quarantine
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): ( n.) The period of forty days during which the widow had the privilege of remaining in the mansion house of which her husband died seized.
(2): ( v. t.) To compel to remain at a distance, or in a given place, without intercourse, when suspected of having contagious disease; to put under, or in, quarantine.
(3): ( n.) Specifically, the term, originally of forty days, during which a ship arriving in port, and suspected of being infected a malignant contagious disease, is obliged to forbear all intercourse with the shore; hence, such restraint or inhibition of intercourse; also, the place where infected or prohibited vessels are stationed.
(4): ( n.) A space of forty days; - used of Lent.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
The prescribed time, generally 40 days (hence the name), of non-intercourse with the shore for a ship suspected of infection, latterly enforced, and that very strictly, in the cases of infection with yellow fever or plague; since November 1896, the system of quarantine as regards the British Islands has ceased to exist.
