No, I remembered that "insula" meant "island" and made the enourmous leap of faith that there might be a connection.
If I'd wanted to use an online dictionary, oed.com would have told me:
"f. L. insula island + -ATE(3)"
and ATE(3) would let me know that it was "a verbal formative" verbs are doing words, right TK? It would then give me a nice translation of the latin as "To make into an island by surrounding with water; to convert into an island." Which when you really think about it, makes even more sense as when you insulate something you are *making* it into an island, you are not *made* it into an island.
The true lesson here is that, while in Oxford, the online dictionaries are better than the ones in TK's room, however guesswork and memory gets you just about as close in about one tenth of the time. Listen ye not to the false teachings of the apostate!
Btw, Duke. While I'm here, oed also mentions that isolate is from the latin for "to reduce into an island" so pretty much the same meaning but we chose the other word to you guys.
Are we all happy now?
korexus.
[edit]
Aha! Further perusal of oed.com reveals that there is also "insulate" as an adjective which does have the derivation which TK mentioned. This is described as "rare" and with the same meaning as "insulated".
Moral of the story: Check the entry before posting next time, TK.
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