You may not know it, but you have almost certain spoken Venetian over the past few months. Any discussion of the current world health crisis inevitably circles around to “quarantine”, which is derived from the Venetian term quarantena, or “forty days”. 

Quarantena was once used to refer to the 40-day period in which ships and their crew were required to anchor offshore when arriving in the Venetian lagoon in the middle ages as a way to prevent the spread of the plague and other exotic diseases to the Floating City. Today, of course, quarantine indicates any extended period of isolation for health reasons.