Dictionary

encloser en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ɪnˈkləʊzə/ (UK)

Etymology

From enclose + -er.

Meanings

1. (historical) Someone who appropriates common land.
   • Ironically, it was the encloser who had acted in an unbounded manner by violating the institutional boundaries of local community power. 1991, Victor Magagna, Communities of Grain:
   • It was said, for example, that […] the families of notorious enclosers always died out in three generations […]. 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 94:
   • In one episode during the long-running dispute over enclosure at Grewelthorpe Moor in Yorkshire, the women of the community followed the encloser on to the moor and, ‘fallinge downe upon their knees, and some of them weepinge for the loss of their Comon, desired…[him] to be good unto them’. 2001, Braddick & Walters (Eds.), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society, page 133
2. More generally, someone or something that encloses something.
3. An object, procedure, or other portion of code that defines the scope of a variable.

Forms