isolation
/ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/ noun B1- The state of being isolated, detached, or separated; the state of being away from other people. · She lived her final year in complete isolation, not wanting to see anybody.
- The act of isolating.
- The state of not having diplomatic relations with other countries (either with most or all other countries, or with specified other countries).
- The obtaining of an element from one of its compounds, or of a compound from a mixture
- The separation of a patient, suffering from a contagious disease, from contact with others (compare: quarantine) · Upon returning from the field, he went into isolation for a week so as not to infect anyone with potential diseases.
- A database property that determines when and how changes made in one transaction are visible to other concurrent transactions.
- A Freudian defense mechanism in which a person suppresses a harmful thought from developing into a train of thought.
Plural isolations
From the library
Finally, his eyes came round to the fresh and smiling face of Billy, the young but very wise and tactful page, who had helped a little to fill up the gap of loneliness and isolation which surrounded the saturnine figure of the great detective.
Dantès, cast from solitude into the world, frequently experienced an imperious desire for solitude; and what solitude is more complete, or more poetical, than that of a ship floating in isolation on the sea during the obscurity of the night, in the silence of immensity, and under the eye of Heaven?
Our small community of twenty scientists and support staff has adapted remarkably well to this profound isolation.
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