Well, The history of the word "quarantine" is fascinating! (A mini Thread)

The word comes from Latin 'quadraginta' and the Italian 'quaranta', both meaning “40.”

Why 40?

We will have to go back to the mid 1300s when the bubonic plague was ripping through Europe.

1/n https://twitter.com/DekaTablet/status/1278152802997436416

Starting in 1343, the disease wiped out an estimated one-third of Europe’s population during a particularly nasty period of three years between 1347-50. This sweep of the plague resulted in one of the biggest die-offs in human history — and it was an impetus to take action.

2/n

Officials at the port city of Ragusa passed a law establishing trentino, or a 30-day period of isolation for ships arriving from plague-affected areas. No one was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated.

3/n

The law caught on. Over the next 80 years, various other cities adopted similar measures. Within a century, cities extended the isolation period from 30 to 40 days, and the term changed from trentino to quarantino — the root of the English word quarantine that we use today.
4/n