(isolates, isolating, isolated)
1.
To isolate a person or organization means to cause them to lose their friends or supporters.
This policy could isolate the country from the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council...
Political influence is being used to shape public opinion and isolate critics.
VERB: V n from n, V n
• isolated
They are finding themselves increasingly isolated within the teaching profession.
ADJ: usu v-link ADJ
• isolation
Diplomatic isolation could lead to economic disaster.
N-UNCOUNT: usu with supp
2.
If you isolate yourself, or if something isolates you, you become physically or socially separated from other people.
When he was thinking out a problem Tweed's habit was never to isolate himself in his room...
His radicalism and refusal to compromise isolated him...
Police officers had a siege mentality that isolated them from the people they served...
But of course no one lives totally alone, isolated from the society around them.
= cut off
VERB: V pron-refl, V n, V n from n, V-ed
3.
If you isolate something such as an idea or a problem, you separate it from others that it is connected with, so that you can concentrate on it or consider it on its own.
Our anxieties can also be controlled by isolating thoughts, feelings and memories...
Gandhi said that those who isolate religion from politics don't understand the nature of either.
VERB: V n, V n from n
4.
To isolate a substance means to obtain it by separating it from other substances using scientific processes. (TECHNICAL)
We can use genetic engineering techniques to isolate the gene that is responsible...
Researchers have isolated a new protein from the seeds of poppies.
VERB: V n, V n from n
5.
To isolate a sick person or animal means to keep them apart from other people or animals, so that their illness does not spread.
You don't have to isolate them from the community.
VERB: V n from n, also V n