Other forms: closed, closer, closing, closest, closes
To close something is to move a door, a lid or a window so that nothing can get through it any more. Closing the front door with your foot because your hands are full, closing a book on a train, a laptop lid closing with a click.
Two words hide in this one spelling and they do not sound the same. The verb ends in a z sound and rhymes with nose. The adjective ends in an s sound and rhymes with dose: a close friend, close to the station, meaning near in space, in time or in feeling. The verb goes well past doors — shops close at six, a factory closes for good, a meeting closes, you close an account, and the gap between two runners closes. A close race is one nobody wins easily, and a close room is stuffy and airless. There is a noun too, meaning the end of something: at the close of play, bring the matter to a close.
1verbcloseTo move a door, lid or window so that the opening is blocked.~2%
“Close the window — it's freezing in here.”
synonyms: shut
2adjectivespaceNear in space, in time or in relationship.~55%
“We live close to the station, two streets away.”
3verbstopTo stop being open for business, for the day or for good.~23%
“The bakery closes at two on Sundays.”
4verbbringTo bring something to an end.~2%
“She closed the meeting after twenty minutes.”
5adjectiveequalSo nearly equal that the result is hard to call.~16%
“It was a close race until the last lap.”
6nounendThe end of something.~2%
“Trading was steady at the close of the day.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: shut
Close arrived from two directions at once. Middle English closen carried on Old English clysan, and alongside it came Old French clos, from Latin clausus and claudo, to bar, block or close. At the bottom is a Proto-Indo-European root about keys, hooks and nails, the same one behind Latin clavis, a key: to close was to put the bar across. The adjective meaning near began as shut in, confined — and things shut up together are things that are near each other.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kleh₂w-
Middle English
closen — to close, enclose
English, today
close
From Middle English closen (“to close, enclose”), partly continuing (in altered form) earlier Middle English clusen (“to close”) from Old English clȳsan (“to close, shut”); compare beclose, foreclose, etc.), and partly derived from Middle English clos (“close, shut up, confined, secret”), from Old French clos (“close, confined”), from Latin clausus (“shut up”), from claudō (“to bar, block, close, enclose, bring an end to, confine”), from Proto-Indo-European kleh₂w- (“key, hook, nail”), related to Latin clāvis (“key, deadbolt, bar”), clāvus (“nail, peg”), claustrum (“bar, bolt, barrier”), claustra (“dam, wall, barricade, stronghold”). Cognate with Ancient Greek κλείω, κλείς (“bar, bolt, key”), Russian заключи́ть (via ключ), German schließen (“to close, conclude, lock”), Dutch sluiten (“to close, conclude, lock”). Partially replaced Old English lūcan (“to close, lock, enclose”), (whence English lock). Doublet of clause.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA