Being a bit of a pedant, I was somewhat irritated by the headline in the Guardian yesterday:
Coronavirus: returning Britons could be kept in quarantine for 14 days
Why the irritation? Because of the meaning of the word 'quarantine'. Even as far back as primary school, I learnt that the word originated in the mid 17th century, from the Italian word 'quarantina', which meant '40 days'.
As Wikipedia says: "The word quarantine comes from a seventeenth-century Venetian variant of the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning forty days, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic."
So for me, when I hear the word 'quarantine', I think of 40 days and not 14.
In a similar vein, when I hear the word 'September', I think of 7 and when I hear October,
I think of 8. When, therefore, the Germans give a date as "der 07.08.2019",
I always have to add 2 to the 8 to get October.
It can be annoying when you know the meaning of words.
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ReplyDeleteIn Roman times, a year started in March. Hence 8th month --> October, 9th Month -> November and 10th Month --> December. I do not know how and when the beginning of the year was changed into the the month of Janus --> January. - In general. our time base is quite complicated. 12 months, 7-day week, a day divided into 24 hours divided into 60 minutes.. and so on. / M.
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