0 past simple and past participle of foreclose
1 (especially of banks) to take back property that was bought with borrowed money because the money was not being paid back as formally agreed:
The bank is threatening to foreclose on the family's house.
2 to prevent something from being considered as a possibility in the future:
The leader's aggressive stance seems to have foreclosed any chance of diplomatic compromise.
Conventional wisdom identifies the negative effects of neoliberal policies enacted and opportunities foreclosed as the greatest threat to indigenous peoples.
If a farmer is foreclosed, he loses his land and enters the labour pool.
In the first place, it guaranteed that the depression would be deep and prolonged and that many of its possible outcomes would be foreclosed.
By generating and developing a political vocabulary of sectarianism, the colonial state in fact foreclosed the possibility of creating a viable language of order.
The regionalist logic indeed empowered an endless train of statements that foreclosed the articulation of questions about cultural identity.
But the future was not foreclosed in 1559 or 1570, it was available and open : there was, if not everything, still much to play for.
In contrast, street encounters occurred only when one of the warring parties foreclosed mutual criticism in each other's presence and had to be compelled to meet its opponents.
The personalisation of state power, and the disregard for due legal and constitutional processes under military rule, has also foreclosed the development of enduring institutional responses to minority problems.
