shut the door

English

Alternative forms

• close the door
• slam the door

Pronunciation

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Verb

shut the door (third-person singular simple present shuts the door, present participle shutting the door, simple past and past participle shut the door)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shut,‎ the,‎ door.
2. (figuratively, transitive with on) To refuse to consider, remember, accept, or engage in.
   • 1907, Mark Twain, Christian Science, Appendix A:

     Contentment with the past, or the cold conventionality of custom, may no longer shut the door on science.

   • 1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 46, in What's Wrong With The World:

     But I believe I am justified in shutting the door on this vista of argument.

   • 1911, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 1, in The New Machiavelli, London: John Lane; The Bodley Head […], →OCLC:

     [H]e pulled off his peasant clothes covered with the dust and dirt of that immediate life, washed himself, put on his "noble court dress," closed the door on the world of toiling and getting, private loving, private hating and personal regrets, sat down with a sigh of contentment to those wider dreams.

   • 1983, Anthony C. Yu, Journey to the West, Volume 2, →ISBN, page 140:

     Let's shut the door on conflict.

   • 2006 April 30, Karen Tumulty, “Al Gore”, in Time:

     But while Gore has not entirely shut the door on another run for President, he insists that he is "not planning" to be a candidate again.

   • 2008 September 2, Rusty Miller, “Tressel reassures Buckeyes fans on Wells”, in USA Today, retrieved 27 June 2011:

     Yet Tressel didn't slam the door on the possibility that Wells might still play in Saturday's game against Ohio University.