# enclosure
## English
### Alternative forms

* inclosure (was as common as or more common until the early 1800s; now uncommon)

### Etymology

From Middle English enclosure, from Old French enclosure, from enclore, from Latin inclūdere, inclūdō, from in- (“in”) + claudō (“to shut”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kleh₂u- (“key, hook, nail”). Alike to inclusion.

### Pronunciation

* (US) IPA: /ɛnˈkloʊʒəɹ/, /ɪnˈkloʊʒəɹ/
* (UK) IPA: /ɪnˈkləʊʒə/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* (New Zealand) IPA: /ɘnˈklɐʉʒɘ/
* Hyphenation: en‧clo‧sure

### Noun

enclosure (countable and uncountable, plural enclosures)
* (countable) Something that is enclosed, i.e. inserted into a letter or similar package.
    There was an enclosure with the letter — a photo.
* (uncountable) The act of enclosing, i.e. the insertion or inclusion of an item in a letter or package.
    The enclosure of a photo with your letter is appreciated.
* (countable) An area, domain, or amount of something partially or entirely enclosed by barriers.
    He faced punishment for creating the fenced enclosure in a public park.
    The glass enclosure holds the mercury vapor.
    The winning horse was first into the unsaddling enclosure.
** 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 199:And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures.
** 1989, Octavia E. Butler, “Part III, Chapter 7”, in Imago, page 210:Away from the village, there was an enclosure containing several large animals of a kind I had not seen before—shaggy, long-necked, small-headed creatures who stood or lay at ease around their pen. Alpacas?
* (uncountable) The act of separating and surrounding an area, domain, or amount of something with a barrier.
    The enclosure of public land is against the law.
    The experiment requires the enclosure of mercury vapor in a glass tube.
    At first, untrained horses resist enclosure.
* (uncountable, by extension) The act of restricting access to ideas, works of art or technologies using patents or intellectual property laws.
** 2014, Astra Taylor, chapter 5, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN:Copyright, from day one, was designed to be both an impediment and an incentive, a mechanism of enclosure (one that prevented the unlicensed printing of texts, thereby limiting access) and a catalyst of sorts, a structure to stimulate the production of literary goods by rewarding writers and publishers for their labor.
** 2019, Robert Stam, World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media‎, Routledge, →ISBN:The commons evokes resistance to “enclosure” in all its forms, whether in its early proto-capitalist form of fencing in commonly shared land, or in its contemporary forms of marshalling judicial restraints such as “patent” and “intellectual property” to police the ownership of ideas.
* (uncountable, British History) The post-feudal process of subdivision of common lands for individual ownership.
    Strip-farming disappeared after enclosure.
* (religion) The area of a convent, monastery, etc where access is restricted to community members.

#### Usage notes

* For more on the spelling of this word, see enclose.

#### Derived terms

* antienclosure
* banjo enclosure
* loudspeaker enclosure
* nonenclosure
* speaker enclosure

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Anagrams

* corneules, encolures

## Old French
### Alternative forms

* encloseure

### Etymology

enclos-, stem of enclore +‎ -ure.

### Noun

enclosure oblique singular, f (oblique plural enclosures, nominative singular enclosure, nominative plural enclosures)
* enclosure (act of enclosing something)
* enclosure (enclosed area)

### References

* Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX$^e$ au XV$^e$ siècle (1881) (encloseure)
* enclosure on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub