closure
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: klō'zhər
ipa: /ˈkləʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/
ipa: /ˈkloʊ.ʒɚ/
ipa: /ˈkləʉ.ʒə(ɹ)/
rhymes: (UK) -əʊʒə(ɹ)
Forms: form: closures
Etymology: From Middle English closure, from Old French closure, from Late Latin clausura, from Latin claudere (“to close”); see clausure and cloture (etymological doublets) and close.
Senses: glosses: An event or occurrence that signifies an ending.
examples: text: to find emotional closure
text: In crowded rooms, and I keep lookin' for closeness / Maybe I'll never get closure
ref: 2024, “Crowded Roomz”, in Silence is Loud, performed by Nia Archives:
text: In Israel, a state commission of inquiry is not merely a judicial instrument or a means of settling facts. It’s a ritual of national closure that allows people to put events in order and move on.
ref: 2025 March 14, Gershom Gorenberg, “Netanyahu Doesn’t Want the Truth to Come Out”, in The Atlantic:
glosses: A feeling of completeness; the experience of an emotional conclusion, usually to a difficult period.
glosses: A device to facilitate temporary and repeatable opening and closing.
examples: text: Instead, make f and g input arguments, and use the closure around the inner function so that this code works with any two functions that you provide. Closures are important features that work amazingly well with higher-order functions; I’ll review them in section 4.4.
ref: 2021, Luis Atencio, The Joy of JavaScript, New York: Manning Publications, →ISBN, page 82:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
troponyms: thunk
glosses: An abstraction that represents a function within an environment, a context consisting of the variables that are both bound at a particular time during the execution of the program and that are within the function's scope.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: The smallest set that both includes a given subset and possesses some given property.
examples: text: 7 THEOREM The closure of any set is the union of the set and the set of its accumulation points.
ref: 1955 [Van Nostrand Reinhold], John L. Kelley, General Topology, 2017, Dover, page 42, The closure (𝔗-closure) of a subset A of a topological space (X,𝔗) is the intersection of the members of the family of all closed sets containing A. […]
topics: mathematics
sciences
topology
glosses: The smallest closed set which contains the given set.
raw_tags: of a set
examples: text: the closure of a door, or of a chink
glosses: The act of shutting; a closing.
examples: text: The closure of Hammersmith Bridge means road traffic has to use Chiswick and Putney Bridges instead.
text: Those who have advocated the closure of the G.C. have so far failed to say by which alternative route this North-to-West traffic could be carried.
ref: 1960 December, B. Perren, “The role of the Great Central—present and future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 765:
text: Despite the line proving to be a useful strategic route for men and supplies to the British naval fleets stationed at Scapa Flow in both world wars, the Duke's legacy looked to have passed into history when it was listed for closure in the infamous Beeching report.
ref: 2021 October 20, Paul Stephen, “Leisure and pleasure on the Far North Line”, in RAIL, number 942, page 48:
text: Schrinner has since said the closures are needed to assess storm damage and to build the case for a major bridge restoration.
ref: 2025 April 13, Joe Hinchliffe, “Sudden closure of Story Bridge to cyclists shows ‘car is still king in Brisbane’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
glosses: The act of shutting or closing something permanently or temporarily.
examples: 1729 November 28, Alexander Pope, Letter to Jonathan Swift, 1824, The Works of Jonathan Swift: Containing Additional Letters, Volume 17, 2nd Edition, page 284,
I admire on this consideration your sending your last to me quite open, without a seal, wafer, or any closure whatever, manifesting the utter openness of the writer.
synonyms: fastener
glosses: That which closes or shuts; that by which separate parts are fastened or closed.
examples: text: O thou bloody prison […] / Within the guilty closure of thy walls / Richard the Second here was hacked to death.
ref: c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:
glosses: That which encloses or confines; an enclosure.
topics: government
politics
glosses: A method of ending a parliamentary debate and securing an immediate vote upon a measure before a legislative body.
topics: human-sciences
sciences
social-science
sociology
glosses: The phenomenon by which a group maintains its resources by the exclusion of others based on various criteria. ᵂᵖ
examples: text: The comic book reader performs closure within each panel, between panels, and among panels.
ref: 2009, Randy Duncan, Matthew J. Smith, The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture, page 166:
topics: comics
literature
media
publishing
glosses: The process whereby the reader of a comic book infers the sequence of events by looking at the picture panels.
qualifier: food packaging industry
glosses: The element of packaging that closes a container.
Derived terms: algebraic closure
Clojure
closureless
closure operator
closure space
closure temperature
deductive closure
harp closure
kangaroo closure
Kleene closure
microclosure
misclosure
nonclosure
openture
overclosure
postclosure
preclosure
reclosure
semiclosure
subclosure
transitive closure
Related terms: cloture