The Flux of Language

 

• Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.

• Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

Quarantine and Isolation - CDC

So says the ultimate authority – a Government agency !

But the two definitions are exactly reversed.

During the 1940’s it was not uncommon to see, in walking around my small hometown of Sheffield, a sign posted in front of a home that proclaimed in BIG letters:

QUARANTINE

It was understood that someone in that house was afflicted with an infectious disease – and that there was to be no approach to that house.

I would appeal, if I had means of contacting them, to The Gods of the Copybook Heading – perhaps I might there learn how such atrocities occur !