Preclude comes from Latin praecludere ('to close off, shut out'), from prae- ('before') + claudere ('to shut'). The historical chain includes Latin praecludere and Latin claudere. The quoted older senses, "to close off, shut out", "before", and "to shut", supply the semantic anchors for preclude. The formation is best read as compound and borrowed: the word preclude carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a verb, "to prevent from happening; to make impossible". English derivatives include preclusion and preclusive; related English forms include exclude, include, seclude, and close. The result is a verb whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.