isolation

What it means

1. uncountableThe 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.

   Synonyms: aloneness, seclusion, aloneness, loneliness, loneness, onehead, oneship, onlyhood

2. countableuncountableThe act of isolating.
3. countableuncountablediplomacyThe state of not having diplomatic relations with other countries (either with most or all other countries, or with specified other countries).

   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, […]

   September 1993, Jon Brook Wolfsthal, “The Israeli initiative”, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, volume 49, number 7, page 8

   2 more examples

   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.

   1975, W. Raymond Duncan, “Problems of Cuban Foreign Policy, chapter 20”, in Irving Louis Horowitz, editor, Cuban Communism, 5th edition, Transaction, published 1985, page 486

   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.

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

In a sentence

She lived her final year in complete isolation, not wanting to see anybody.

Where it comes from

1. Frenchisolation
2. Englishisolation

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