isolation
Pluralisolations (some meanings)
- 1The state of being separated or detached from other people.
Her isolation grew once her closest friends moved abroad.
Remote researchers must cope with long periods of isolation in the field.
Similarsolitude, seclusion, loneliness, aloneness, solitariness
Oppositecompanionship, company, contact, togetherness
Note
An island hides inside this word: French isolé meant "placed on an island," and isolation, in English from 1800, is being cut off the way an island is cut off from the mainland. In this sense it is normally uncountable and usually takes the preposition in, as in living in complete isolation. Seclusion and aloneness are its close neighbors.
- 2The act of separating something or someone from everything else.
Engineers achieved isolation of the faulty component before testing the rest.
The isolation of one variable is essential to a controlled experiment.
Similarseparation, segregation, detachment, disconnection
Oppositeintegration
- 3The separation of a patient with a contagious disease from contact with others.
The measles outbreak forced several children into strict isolation.
Nurses follow careful protocols when caring for a patient in isolation.
Similarquarantine
Note
A hospital word that is easily confused with quarantine. Isolation separates someone who is carrying an infection, or is suspected of carrying one. Quarantine restricts the movement of people who have been exposed but are not yet ill. A patient is placed in isolation or goes into isolation, usually for a set period.
- 4The state of a country having no diplomatic relations with other nations, whether with most countries or with certain specified ones.
Economic sanctions deepened the regime's diplomatic isolation.
The treaty ended decades of isolation between the two states.
Similarestrangement
Oppositeengagement, rapprochement
Note
In foreign affairs the word usually names a pressure applied to a country rather than a condition it chooses: governments increase, deepen or ease another state's isolation. Its natural opposite is engagement. Dore Gold's The Rise of Nuclear Iran (2009) sets the diplomatic isolation of Iran against diplomatic engagement. Adjectives such as diplomatic or hemispheric fix the scope of the isolation.
- 5In chemistry, the process of separating out an element from a compound containing it, or a compound from a mixture.
Chemists reported the isolation of a new element from the radioactive mineral.
The isolation of caffeine from coffee beans is a classic lab exercise.
Similarextraction, separation, purification
Note
In the laboratory the word names a result as much as a process. To report the isolation of an element is to claim it has been obtained pure, freed from the compound or mixture that held it. The usual frame is the isolation of X from Y, and the work runs through methods such as distillation, crystallization or chromatography.
- 6In Freudian theory, a defense mechanism that cuts a distressing thought off from its emotional charge and from the thoughts it would otherwise lead to.
In analysis, his isolation separated the traumatic event from any emotional response.
Clinicians may recognize isolation when a patient recounts a disturbing memory with no feeling attached.
Note
In psychoanalytic theory the threat is handled without forgetting. The troubling idea stays conscious, but its emotional charge is cut away and its links to other thoughts are severed, so it cannot set off a wider chain of disturbing associations. That is why a memory held in isolation can be recounted calmly, with no feeling attached.
- 7In databases, the property governing when, and in what way, one transaction's changes can be seen by other transactions running at the same time.
Stronger isolation reduces anomalies but can lower throughput.
The database's isolation guarantees that uncommitted changes stay hidden from other queries.
Note
Transaction processing uses the word for one of its ACID guarantees: the I stands for isolation. It comes in levels, from read uncommitted at the weak end to serializable at the strong end, and choosing a level is a trade between consistency and concurrency. Engineers speak of an isolation level, or of stronger and weaker isolation.
Practice
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Origin
First attested in 1800, from French isolation, from isolé meaning "placed on an island" (thus away from other people). It is equivalent to isolate + -ion.