Word.ws English Dictionary

closes the stable door after the horse has bolted

closes the stable door after the horse has bolted is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 closes the stable door after the horse has bolted

What is closes the stable door after the horse has bolted the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Closes the stable door after the horse has bolted is the third-person singular simple present indicative of close the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Words near closes the stable door after the horse has bolted in the dictionary

  1. closes the door on
  2. closes the face
  3. closes the loop
  4. closes the range
  5. closes the stable door after the horse has been stolen
  6. closes the stable door after the horse has bolted
  7. closes up
  8. closes with
  9. closest
  10. closest alligator to the boat
  11. closest alligators to the boat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: closes the stable door after the horse has 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: “closes the stable door after the horse has bolted.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/closes_the_stable_door_after_the_horse_has_bolted. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.