Word.ws English Dictionary

closed the stable door after the horse had bolted

closed the stable door after the horse had bolted is the simple past and past participle of close the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Meaning of close the stable door after the horse has bolted

Verb

close the stable door after the horse has bolted (third-person singular simple present closes the stable door after the horse has bolted, present participle closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, simple past and past participle closed the stable door after the horse had bolted)

  1. (idiomatic) To attempt to prevent a problem that has already occurred; to design and implement a preventive mechanism that is too late (after the first failure instead of before).
    • We are now in an election period, with WhatsApp and closed Facebook groups being used, as we speak, in electoral campaigning, but the law has not changed since the DCMS Committee, on which I serve, raised these issues. We have yet another instance of shutting the door after the horse has bolted.2019 May 15, Ian C. Lucas, “WhatsApp Data Breach”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), column 242

Questions about closed the stable door after the horse had bolted

What is closed the stable door after the horse had bolted the simple past and past participle of?
Closed the stable door after the horse had bolted is the simple past and past participle of close the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Words near closed the stable door after the horse had bolted in the dictionary

  1. closed the door on
  2. closed the face
  3. closed the loop
  4. closed the range
  5. closed the stable door after the horse had been stolen
  6. closed the stable door after the horse had bolted
  7. closed time loop
  8. closed time loops
  9. closed timelike curve
  10. closed timelike curves
  11. closed town

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: closed the stable door after the horse had bolted (page history and authors); close the stable door after the horse has bolted (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “closed the stable door after the horse had bolted.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/closed_the_stable_door_after_the_horse_had_bolted. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.