The Collaborative International Dictionary
Foreclose \Fore*close"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Foreclosed; p. pr. & vb. n. Foreclosing.] [F. forclos, p. p. of forclore to exclude; OF. fors, F. hors, except, outside (fr. L. foris outside) + F. clore to close. See Foreign, and Close, v. t.] To shut up or out; to preclude; to stop; to prevent; to bar; to exclude.
The embargo with Spain foreclosed this trade.
--Carew.
To foreclose a mortgager (Law), to cut him off by a judgment of court from the power of redeeming the mortgaged premises, termed his equity of redemption.
To foreclose a mortgage, (not technically correct, but
often used to signify) the obtaining a judgment for the
payment of an overdue mortgage, and the exposure of the
mortgaged property to sale to meet the mortgage debt.
--Wharton.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: foreclose)
Usage examples of "foreclosed".
In those bird species in which the efforts of one parent suffice, that parent is more often the mother than the father, for the reasons discussed in chapter 2: the female's greater obligate internal investment in the fertilized embryo, the greater opportunities foreclosed for the male by parental care, and the male's low confidence in paternity as a result of internal fertilization.
Hence anthropologists remain undecided whether the two considerations that I have discussed so far—investing in grandchildren and protecting one's prior investment in existing children—suffice to offset menopause's foreclosed option of further children and thus to explain the evolution of human female menopause.
Of the nineteen farms foreclosed by Wendell, the average price he had to pay per acre was sixteen cents.
Those initial discoverers would have filled up the galaxy and foreclosed the possibility of anybody else coming into existence in the future.
But those hypothetical outcomes were foreclosed by mammal extinctions thousands of years earlier.