a line of police, soldiers, or rope used to block off or protect an area from public access.
From French 'cordon' meaning 'small cord' or 'ribbon,' derived from Latin 'chorda' (string). It originally referred to a decorative cord worn by soldiers, then came to mean a line of troops.
The famous cordon sanitaire of 14th-century plague times inspired modern quarantine practices—creating physical barriers to prevent disease spread was one of medieval society's accidental discoveries of epidemiology.
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