Word.ws English Dictionary

shut the door

shut the door verb: to refuse to consider, remember, accept, or engage in.

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. (figuratively) To refuse to consider, remember, accept, or engage in.
    • Contentment with the past, or the cold conventionality of custom, may no longer shut the door on science.1907, Mark Twain, Christian Science, Appendix A
    • But I believe I am justified in shutting the door on this vista of argument.1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 46, in What's Wrong With The World
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shut, the, door.

Synonyms of shut the door

Forms of shut the door

third-person singular presentshuts the door
present participleshutting the door
past participleshut the door
pastshut the door

Questions about shut the door

What does shut the door mean?
Shut the door means to refuse to consider, remember, accept, or engage in.
What part of speech is shut the door?
Shut the door is a verb.
What is the past tense of shut the door?
The past tense of shut the door is shut the door.

Words near shut the door in the dictionary

  1. shut one's mouth
  2. shut one's trap
  3. shut out
  4. shut outs
  5. shut the box
  6. shut the door
  7. shut the fridge
  8. shut the front door
  9. shut the stable door after the horse had bolted
  10. shut the stable door after the horse has bolted
  11. shut up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shut the door (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shut the door on.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shut the door.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shut_the_door. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.