Word.ws English Dictionary

closing the stable door after the horse has bolted

closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is the present participle and gerund 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 closing the stable door after the horse has bolted

What is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted the present participle and gerund of?
Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is the present participle and gerund of close the stable door after the horse has bolted.

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

  1. closing the door on
  2. closing the face
  3. closing the loop
  4. closing the range
  5. closing the stable door after the horse has been stolen
  6. closing the stable door after the horse has bolted
  7. closing time
  8. closing time effect
  9. closing time effects
  10. closing times
  11. closing up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: closing 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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