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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
preclude
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
possibility
▪ This begs many questions, and precludes many possibilities.
▪ The drenching rain would have precluded the possibility of sleep without this additional cause.
▪ Was it not too restrictive to preclude the possibility that forces of greater intensity had acted in the past?
▪ Previously scheduled tournaments precluded the possibility.
▪ Metaphors are essentially open ended because the interpreter can never preclude the possibility of discovering further analogical insight.
▪ In some instances the imperatives of lower order needs may preclude the possibility of following higher order needs. 4.
use
▪ While these could be used on the Promenade, their length and awkward entrances precluded their use around town.
▪ The occurence of acute hepatic impairment with intravenous amiodarone does not necessarily preclude the use of this drug by mouth.
▪ It obviously precluded its use in everyday transactions, such as buying loaves of bread.
▪ Paradoxically, the very accuracy of these scoring systems for assessing the severity of illness precludes their use for comparison and audit.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Lack of evidence may preclude a trial.
▪ These regulations may preclude newspapers from publishing details of politicians' private lives.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Blake returned to London a hero in the eyes of MI6 but the secret nature of his work precluded any official recognition.
▪ But while public provision does not preclude charitable giving, the existence of the profit motive in any service usually does.
▪ It must also dole out a level of punishment so severe that it precludes any further response.
▪ Jehovah's Witnesses' religious beliefs precludes them from undertaking compulsory national service.
▪ The many complications seem to preclude this even though the importance of success is as great as ever.
▪ The requirement under consideration precludes this, since there is no threat of violence towards another person involved in such conduct.
▪ The slow kinetics of antigen-antibody dissociation, unfortunately, precludes using antibodies in reversible sensors for continuous monitoring.
▪ While these could be used on the Promenade, their length and awkward entrances precluded their use around town.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Preclude

Preclude \Pre*clude"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Precluded; p. pr. & vb. n. Precluding.] [L. praecludere, praeclusum; prae before + claudere to shut. See Close, v.]

  1. To put a barrier before; hence, to shut out; to hinder; to stop; to impede.

    The valves preclude the blood from entering the veins.
    --E. Darwin.

  2. To shut out by anticipative action; to prevent or hinder by necessary consequence or implication; to deter action of, access to, employment of, etc.; to render ineffectual; to obviate by anticipation.

    This much will obviate and preclude the objections.
    --Bentley.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
preclude

1610s, from Latin praecludere "to close, shut off; hinder, impede," from prae- "before, ahead" (see pre-) + claudere "to shut" (see close (v.)). Related: Precluded; precluding.

Wiktionary
preclude

alt. (context transitive English) Remove the possibility of; (l en rule out); prevent or exclude; to make (l en impossible). vb. (context transitive English) Remove the possibility of; (l en rule out); prevent or exclude; to make (l en impossible).

WordNet
preclude
  1. v. keep from happening or arising; have the effect of preventing; "My sense of tact forbids an honest answer" [syn: prevent, forestall, foreclose, forbid]

  2. make impossible, especially beforehand [syn: rule out, close out]

Usage examples of "preclude".

Stated flatly as a matter of incontrovertible natural law, this principle evidently precluded any sort of institutionalized distinctions of the kind presupposed in a society of orders.

This being so, we are precluded from saying that speech concededly punishable when immediately directed at individuals cannot be outlawed if directed at groups with whose position and esteem in society the affiliated individual may be inextricably involved.

He was tempted to wag his head reprovingly, but his telephone conversation temporarily precluded any such display of emotion.

The absence of the rostral knob would preclude its being a king vulture.

But what precludes the Intellectual-Principle from being present, unalloyed, within the soul?

It is held that if one judge educated in the ideas of the Order, appreciating to the full the priceless importance of its teaching and the guilt of treason against it, is unpersuaded that there exists sufficient cause for the supreme penalty, the doubt is such as should preclude the infliction of that penalty.

This arrangement gives it very much the appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any imputation of luxuriance of fancy in the plot.

He was strangely convinced that the marking was the print of some bulky, unknown, and radically unclassifiable organism of considerably advanced evolution, notwithstanding that the rock which bore it was of so vastly ancient a date - Cambrian if not actually pre-Cambrian - as to preclude the probable existence not only of all highly evolved life, but of any life at all above the unicellular or at most the trilobite stage.

The old charts we have referred to preclude the possibility of a discovery by him of the western and eastern shores.

For the American counterinsurgent there are ideological strictures that preclude U.

Besides, the Dantesque agony of twisted rock landscape, plus the near-intolerable heat outside the Colony Bubble, precluded coherent thought.

If some of the dogs were not safe to be sent home, if some of them had medical problems that would preclude their going home, if some required constant veterinary care just to survive, we would then have to notify the owners, and with their concurrence, take the necessary unpleasant step.

She was not, therefore, precluded from challenging the finding of the Nevada court that the decedent was, at the time of the divorce, domiciled in that State.

II is a small world at the L4 resonance point with a strong magnetic field and a resulting hot exosphere that precludes a dense atmosphere.

Surely he must know that the very nature of their experiments precluded the use of ether, and that in their time, as to-day, if the experiment were to be tried at all, it was necessary that the pain be felt.