Isolate

How to spell isolate

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce isolate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does isolate mean?

1. verbTo set something or someone apart from others, separating it from contact or influence.
2. nounA person, group, or specimen that has been separated or kept apart, often a sample taken for study.

Isolate in a sentence

• verb

  The hospital had to isolate the patient to stop the infection spreading.

• noun

  The laboratory stored each bacterial isolate in a labelled vial.

• verb

  Engineers worked to isolate the faulty circuit before repairs began.

• noun

  The researcher compared one isolate against the wider population.

Where does isolate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin insula, meaning 'island', and its derivative insulatus, which described something 'made into an island' or set apart by water. Italian turned this into isolato, 'isolated', and French borrowed it as isolé. English first took in the French form isole during the 1700s, but speakers found it awkward and reshaped it into the adjective 'isolated', from which the verb 'isolate' was then back-formed by the early nineteenth century. The same Latin insula sits inside 'insulate' and 'peninsula', and noticing that island ancestor helps explain the single 's' and the 'isol' spelling. The core idea has stayed remarkably steady: to isolate something is still to strand it on its own little island, cut off from everything around it.

How the word is built

• isol- (from Latin insula: island)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)