This question was submitted by Srihari over a couple of beers (ok, I am kidding, but he really did submit this question).
The word X comes from a word of similar name in the Venetian dialect. In the 14th century, ships and people, before entering the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, were forced to do "Y" for a certain period of time. This act of Y is the present day meaning of X. The word in the Venetian dialect relates to the period of time of Y. The usage of X was popularized by the Persian scholar, Abu Ali Sina, also known by his Latin name, Avicenna. Identify X.
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Quarantine from 40 days.
Quarantine???
I suspect the Venetian word has something to do with "qua" (4 days??) from which this word came...
Quarantine ?
My guess is quarantine..
That seems reasonable for a maritime city-state situation.. I'll go out on a limb to suggest Avicenna first defined it since he was a famous medic. Not sure of the period of time it refers to in the Italian.. A few days?
The answer is "quarantine", following from the practice of stopping ships at the port to prevent spread of disease, initally for a period of 30 days, which was later increased to 40 days. 40 days in Italian is quaranti giorni, which is where the term got its name.
Congrats to Tour de Farce (which I strongly suspect to be Srihari himself!), Nikhil, Ishani and Rahul for the correct answer.
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