ountries around the world have gone into “lockdown” to slow the spread of coronavirus, though some lockdowns are more permeable than others, and no one has yet been forcibly barricaded inside their homes. So why “lockdown” in the first place? “Lock” is an old Germanic word for a lock or other fastening mechanism, or a space enclosed by such a mechanism, which is why a lock in modern English is also a barrier in a canal. To “lock in” (a person in a chamber) or to “lock up” (originally the chamber or door itself) date from the 15th and 16th centuries, but a “lockdown” is much more recent. It was only in the 1970s that “lockdown” began to mean an extended state of confinement for inmates of prisons or psychiatric hospitals, and thereafter any period of enforced isolation for security. Originally, in 19th-century America, a “lock-down” was a strip of wood or peg that secured the poles or a raft together when timber was transported by river. It is therefore a wistful irony that our present condition is named after a mechanism that once ensured the reliability of travel in the great outdoors.