Mysteries of vernacular: Quarantine - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel
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Stemming from the days of bubonic plague in Medieval Europe, quarantines were originally used to prevent potentially plague-infested ships from disembarking at a port city. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel explain how the length of the wait, often 40 days, came to be associated with the word we use today.
Quaranta means forty in Italian. Why is this significant?
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