Isolated

How to spell isolated

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce isolated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does isolated mean?

1. adjectiveFar away from other places, people, or things; standing alone and cut off.
2. verbPast tense of isolate: separated something or someone from others.

Isolated in a sentence

• adjective

  The cottage sat in an isolated valley with no neighbours for miles.

• verb

  The engineers isolated the faulty circuit before running the repair.

• adjective

  During the lockdown many elderly residents felt isolated and lonely.

• verb

  The nurses isolated the patient to stop the infection spreading.

Where does isolated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin insula, meaning 'island', the same root that gives us 'insular' and 'peninsula'. Italian turned insula into isolato, meaning 'made into an island' or 'set apart', and French borrowed this as isolé. English adopted the French form in the 1700s, and writers soon reshaped it into the verb 'isolate', from which the participle 'isolated' developed, describing something cut off and standing alone like an island. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the single 's' is pronounced like a 'z', and the schwa vowel before the 'l' tempts writers toward an extra letter. Remembering the hidden 'island' behind insula explains why there is just one 's' and one 'l'.

How the word is built

• isol- (from Latin insula: island)
• -ate (verb suffix)
• -ed (past tense/participle)