foreclose
/fɔːˈkləʊz
/verb
1 [no object] Take possession of a mortgaged property when the mortgagor fails to keep up their mortgage payments: the bank was threatening to foreclose on his mortgage...
- A creditor holding a purchase money mortgage or deed of trust on residential property must foreclose on the property, and cannot recover any deficiency.
- They tried to blow her up, to burn her out, to foreclose on her mortgage.
- If you and I spend endlessly, the bank will eventually foreclose on the mortgage.
1.1 [with object] Take away someone’s power to redeem (a mortgage) and take possession of the mortgaged property.You're going to see those things, with the mortgages being foreclosed, on the people who no longer have any income, whose stock options are worthless and whose salaries have just vanished, and whose companies have just gone....
- First, this argument ignores that default rates and foreclosure rates are far from the same, and it is only when loans are foreclosed that their default status becomes visible in data.
- Finally, the right to foreclose the mortgage - a right inherent in all mortgages - is available to the bank.
2 [with object] Rule out or prevent (a course of action): the decision effectively foreclosed any possibility of his early rehabilitation...
- Meyer notes that many choices have been foreclosed, but our course is far from determined.
- But then of course that would foreclose the usual irresponsible rhetoric about China emanating from the right wing of the GOP - not to mention their hatred of multilateralism.
- The court's ruling also does not foreclose the [FAA] from pursuing its administrative remedies against the airport.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French forclos, past participle of forclore, from for- 'out' (from Latin foras 'outside') + clore 'to close'. The original sense was 'bar from escaping', in late Middle English 'shut out', and 'bar from doing something' (sense 2), hence specifically 'bar someone from redeeming a mortgage' (sense 1, early 18th century).