different between intimacy vs isolation

English

Etymology

intimate +? -cy

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??n.t?.m?.si/

Noun

intimacy (countable and uncountable, plural intimacies)

1. (uncountable, countable) Feeling or atmosphere of closeness and openness towards someone else, not necessarily involving sexuality.
   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Section 13.6^[1]

     To adulterous lust the most sacred duties are sacrificed, because, before marriage, men, by a promiscuous intimacy with women, learned to consider love as a selfish gratification—learned to separate it not only from esteem, but from the affection merely built on habit, which mixes a little humanity with it.

   • 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Truth of Intercourse” in Essays, English and American, The Harvard Classics, Volume 28, edited by Charles W. Eliot, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, p. 287,^[2]

     The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie—heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy.

   • 1908, Jack London, “To Build a Fire” in Lost Face, London: Mills & Boon, 1916,^[3]

     […] there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man.
2. (countable) Intimate relationship.
   • 1787, Robert Burns, Letter to Dr. Moore, 23 April, 1787, in J. Logie Robertson (ed.), The Letters of Robert Burns, Selected and Arranged, with an Introduction, London: Walter Scott, 1887, p. 57,^[5]

     I have formed many intimacies and friendships here, but I am afraid they are all of too tender a construction to bear carriage a hundred and fifty miles.

   • 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, Volume I, Chapter 8,^[6]

     “I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,” said Mr. Knightley presently, “though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet […] ”

   • 1899, Henry James, The Awkward Age, Book One, Chapter 2,^[7]

     “ […] it isn’t my notion of the way to bring up a girl to give her up, in extreme youth, to an intimacy with a young married woman who’s both unhappy and silly, whose conversation has absolutely no limits, who says everything that comes into her head and talks to the poor child about God only knows what […] ”

3. (countable, especially plural) Intimate detail, (item of) intimate information.
   • 1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, 2001, Part One, Chapter 4,

     He recognized the tone as the one used by friendly sisters to discuss the infirmities of their husbands. It was Shama’s plea to a sister to exchange intimacies, to show support.

Antonyms

• solitude

Related terms

• intimate
• intimation

Translations

Anagrams

• imitancy, minacity

English

Etymology

[1800] From French isolation, from isolé, placed on an island (thus away from other people). Equivalent to isolate +? -ion.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?a?s??le???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

isolation (countable and uncountable, plural isolations)

1. (chiefly uncountable) The state of being isolated, detached, or separated; the state of being away from other people.
2. The act of isolating.
3. (diplomacy, of a country) The state of not having diplomatic relations with other countries (either with most or all other countries, or with specified other countries).
   • 1975, W. Raymond Duncan, “Problems of Cuban Foreign Policy”, chapter 20 of Irving Louis Horowitz (editor), Cuban Communism, Fifth Edition, Transaction (publisher, 1985), page 486:

     As of 1975, diplomatic ostracism is still imposed by the Organization of American States (OAS). The inter-American community also exercises a trade embargo against Cuba. But even within this context of hemispheric isolation, Havana’s diplomacy is strikingly contradictory.

   • 1993 September, Jon Brook Wolfsthal, “The Israeli initiative”, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 49, Number 7, page 8:

     Israel could offer to ease North Korea’s isolation with diplomatic recognition, […] ¶ […] But Washington’s strategy of increasing North Korean isolation left no room for back-channel talks with Tel Aviv, […]

   • 2009, Dore Gold, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West, Regnery Publishing, ?ISBN, page 49:

     It [Europe] now pressed Washington to begin direct talks with Tehran, but Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Rice’s point man on Iran, still stressed that diplomatic isolation of Iran—and not diplomatic engagement—was the only acceptable approach for dealing with the Iranian nuclear challenge.

5. (chemistry) The obtaining of an element from one of its compounds, or of a compound from a mixture
6. (medicine) The separation of a patient, suffering from a contagious disease, from contact with others (compare: quarantine)
7. (databases) A database property that determines when and how changes made in one transaction are visible to other concurrent transactions.
8. (psychology) A Freudian defense mechanism in which a person suppresses a harmful thought from developing into a train of thought.

Related terms

• insulate
• insulation
• isolate
• isolatedness

Derived terms

Translations

French

Etymology

isoler +? -ation. Attested since 1774.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /i.z?.la.sj??/

Noun

isolation f (plural isolations)

1. isolation; insulation

2. (linguistics) isolation (low number of morphemes per word on average)
3. (psychology) isolation (a Freudian defense mechanism)

Usage notes

• isolation nowadays has a connotation of physical isolation or insulation as a form of protection, chiefly of objects.
• isolement nowadays has a connotation of isolation in the sense of exclusion.
• In older texts, the two may be used more interchangeably.

Related terms

• isoler
• isolement

Further reading

• “isolation” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).