quarantining

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of setting up or going into isolation in order to prevent the spread of disease.

   The hospital's quarantining of infected patients prevented a wider outbreak.

   Voluntary quarantining became common among returning travelers during the pandemic.

   Similarisolation, segregation, self-isolation

   Note

   The noun reaches well beyond medicine. A 1990 Australian Taxation Office bill speaks of per-country quarantining, which keeps foreign income ring-fenced by its source. J. Brent Crosson writes of a "temporal quarantining of obeah in a moribund past." In every use it is usually uncountable and takes of before whatever is set apart, as in the quarantining of international travelers. The plural quarantinings does exist.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of quarantine.

   Health officials are quarantining travelers arriving from affected regions.

   Quarantining the whole herd, the farmer hoped to stop the infection from spreading.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After a form of be it makes the progressive (officials are quarantining arrivals), and on its own it names the activity as a gerund. The verb behind it runs both ways: transitively, as in quarantining a herd, and intransitively, as when travelers are quarantining at home. Unlike the noun for the act, the gerund takes a direct object: quarantining travelers, not quarantining of travelers.

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