closure

[kloh-zher] /ˈkloʊ ʒər/
noun
1.
the act of closing; the state of being closed.
2.
a bringing to an end; conclusion.
3.
something that closes or shuts.
4.
closer (def 2).
5.
an architectural screen or parapet, especially one standing free between columns or piers.
6.
Phonetics. an occlusion of the vocal tract as an articulatory feature of a particular speech sound.
Compare constriction (def 5).
7.
Parliamentary Procedure. a cloture.
8.
Surveying. completion of a closed traverse in such a way that the point of origin and the endpoint coincide within an acceptably small margin of error.
Compare error of closure.
9.
Mathematics.
  1. the property of being closed with respect to a particular operation.
  2. the intersection of all closed sets that contain a given set.
10.
Psychology.
  1. the tendency to see an entire figure even though the picture of it is incomplete, based primarily on the viewer's past experience.
  2. a sense of psychological certainty or completeness:
    a need for closure.
11.
Obsolete. something that encloses or shuts in; enclosure.
verb (used with object), verb (used without object), closured, closuring.
12.
Parliamentary Procedure. to cloture.
Origin
1350-1400; Middle English < Middle French < Latin clausūra. See close, -ure
Related forms
nonclosure, noun
preclosure, noun
Examples from the web for closure
  • Ford announced its decision to close the plant several months ago but did not set a date for closure.
  • However, the drop was largely due to the temporary closure of a car plant.
  • Yet the facilities where these organisms are cataloged and studied are deteriorating to the point where some even face closure.
  • The last block on a long wall, called the closure block, is a bit tricky to install.
  • Most dealers have kept mum on the subject of closure.
  • Laboratories that do not comply with the deadline could face fines or closure.
  • The government is showing every sign of panicking at the prospect of the closure of car factories and shipyards.
  • Shell said in the process of the closure a larger flare would be visible.
  • In a news release the following day, the school blamed the closure on the seizure of its bank accounts by its major lender.
  • Canadians did not get the closure they had hoped for.
British Dictionary definitions for closure

closure

/ˈkləʊʒə/
noun
1.
the act of closing or the state of being closed
2.
an end or conclusion
3.
something that closes or shuts, such as a cap or seal for a container
4.
(in a deliberative body) a procedure by which debate may be halted and an immediate vote taken See also cloture, guillotine, gag rule
5.
(mainly US)
  1. the resolution of a significant event or relationship in a person's life
  2. a sense of contentment experienced after such a resolution
6.
(geology) the vertical distance between the crest of an anticline and the lowest contour that surrounds it
7.
(phonetics) the obstruction of the breath stream at some point along the vocal tract, such as the complete occlusion preliminary to the articulation of a stop
8.
(logic)
  1. the closed sentence formed from a given open sentence by prefixing universal or existential quantifiers to bind all its free variables
  2. the process of forming such a closed sentence
9.
(maths)
  1. the smallest closed set containing a given set
  2. the operation of forming such a set
10.
(psychol) the tendency, first noted by Gestalt psychologists, to see an incomplete figure like a circle with a gap in it as more complete than it is
verb
11.
(transitive) (in a deliberative body) to end (debate) by closure
Word Origin
C14: from Old French, from Late Latin clausūra bar, from Latin claudere to close
Word Origin and History for closure
n.

late 14c., "a barrier, a fence," from Old French closure "enclosure; that which encloses, fastening, hedge, wall, fence," also closture "barrier, division; enclosure, hedge, fence, wall" (12c., Modern French clôture), from Late Latin clausura "lock, fortress, a closing" (source of Italian chiusura), from past participle stem of Latin claudere "to close" (see close (v.)). Sense of "act of closing, bringing to a close" is from early 15c. In legislation, especially "closing or stopping of debate." Sense of "tendency to create ordered and satisfying wholes" is 1924, from Gestalt psychology.

closure in Technology

1. In a reduction system, a closure is a data structure that holds an expression and an environment of variable bindings in which that expression is to be evaluated. The variables may be local or global. Closures are used to represent unevaluated expressions when implementing functional programming languages with lazy evaluation. In a real implementation, both expression and environment are represented by pointers.
A suspension is a closure which includes a flag to say whether or not it has been evaluated. The term "thunk" has come to be synonymous with "closure" but originated outside functional programming.
2. In domain theory, given a partially ordered set, D and a subset, X of D, the upward closure of X in D is the union over all x in X of the sets of all d in D such that x ("LaTeX as \subseteq and the upward closure of X in D is written \uparrow_\D X).
(1994-12-16)