Isolating

How to spell isolating

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce isolating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does isolating mean?

1. verbThe act of separating something or someone so that it stands apart from everything else.
2. adjectiveCausing a person to feel lonely or cut off from others.

Isolating in a sentence

• verb

  The lab technician is isolating the bacteria from the sample.

• adjective

  Many remote workers find the lack of daily contact deeply isolating.

• verb

  The new firewall works by isolating the infected computer from the network.

• adjective

  Moving to a quiet village can be an isolating experience at first.

Where does isolating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin insula, which simply meant 'island', a piece of land cut off and standing alone in the water. From insula came the Italian isolato, meaning 'made into an island' or 'set apart', and that idea passed into French as isoler. English borrowed the verb 'isolate' in the eighteenth century, originally in scientific and chemical contexts where a substance was separated out and kept on its own. 'Isolating' is the present participle of that verb, describing the act of setting something or someone apart. The same insula root sits inside 'insular' and even 'peninsula' (literally 'almost an island'), and remembering the island at its core helps explain the single 's' that some writers wrongly double.

How the word is built

• isol- (from Latin insula: island)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)