Dictionary

close the book on en · VERB

Etymology

By analogy to closing an accounting journal.

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) To stop worrying about or trying to do something about; to ignore.
   • What greater pleasure for a child than to be able to close the book on all his terrors and go to sleep. 2012, J.M Masson, The Oceanic Feeling:
   • Roth's continued productivity ensures that we can't yet close the book on his career. 2011, David Gooblar, The Major Phases of Philip Roth, page 157:
   • I guess it would take a genius to figure that out and perhaps that is why Pilot Insurance Company and General Accident were so content to close the book on this subject. 2014, Chris Porter, Scapegoat - Scales of Justice Burning, page 37:
2. (idiomatic) To finish; to bring to an end.
   • The gathering, an unprecedented convocation of rulers, influential diplomats and their entourages, was meant to be a grand ending and a grand beginning—the movers and shakers were looking to close the book on the strife and upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars and begin a new chapter of world peace. 2011, Andrea Penrose, The Cocoa Conspiracy:
   • Michael X's execution seemed to close the book on the revolution that rock stars and radicals alike had been awaiting for the previous decade. 2009, Peter Doggett, There's a Riot Going On:
   • We do not presume that our reconstruction will close the book on the evolutionary origins of great ape cognition. 2007, Anne E. Russon, David R. Begun, The Evolution of Thought:

Forms