The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shut \Shut\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Shut; p. pr. & vb. n. Shutting.] [OE. shutten, schutten, shetten, schitten, AS. scyttan to shut or lock up (akin to D. schutten, G. sch["u]tzen to protect), properly, to fasten with a bolt or bar shot across, fr. AS. sce['o]tan to shoot. [root]159. See Shoot.]
To close so as to hinder ingress or egress; as, to shut a door or a gate; to shut one's eyes or mouth.
-
To forbid entrance into; to prohibit; to bar; as, to shut the ports of a country by a blockade.
Shall that be shut to man which to the beast Is open?
--Milton. To preclude; to exclude; to bar out. ``Shut from every shore.''
--Dryden.-
To fold together; to close over, as the fingers; to close by bringing the parts together; as, to shut the hand; to shut a book. To shut in.
To inclose; to confine. ``The Lord shut him in.''
--Cen. vii. 16.-
To cover or intercept the view of; as, one point shuts in another. To shut off.
To exclude.
-
To prevent the passage of, as steam through a pipe, or water through a flume, by closing a cock, valve, or gate. To shut out, to preclude from entering; to deny admission to; to exclude; as, to shut out rain by a tight roof. To shut together, to unite; to close, especially to close by welding. To shut up.
To close; to make fast the entrances into; as, to shut up a house.
To obstruct. ``Dangerous rocks shut up the passage.''
--Sir W. Raleigh.
-
To inclose; to confine; to imprison; to fasten in; as, to shut up a prisoner.
Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
--Gal. iii. 23. -
To end; to terminate; to conclude.
When the scene of life is shut up, the slave will be above his master if he has acted better.
--Collier. To unite, as two pieces of metal by welding.
To cause to become silent by authority, argument, or force.
Usage examples of "to shut off".
Anyone who said you had to shut off your emotions to be a homicide cop had it exactly backward.
At length some one of the enemy regained sense long enough to shut off their own broadcast and the ensuing silence was like that of death, so complete was it.
Unlike Modra, Molly had never learned how to shut off the empathic powers.
He had no choice but to shut off the deflectors and divert all power to the vessel’.
He looked toward the window again, powerless to shut off the words.
The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with, which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts, and which, because it never permits him to look at the world with merely human eyes, scares him into interpreting its unremitting strangeness, its burning intensity of significance, as the manifestations of human or even cosmic malevolence, calling for the most desperate countermeasures, from murderous violence at one end of the .