Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday July 21, 2010
occlude \uh-KLOOD\
, verb:
1. To shut in, out, or off.
2. Physical Chemistry. (Of certain metals and other solids) to incorporate (gases and other foreign substances), as by absorption or adsorption.
3. Dentistry. To shut or close, with the cusps of the opposing teeth of the upper and lower jaws fitting together.
Were you afraid that this person would eclipse you, would occlude your very being, that your life would become the baby and nothing else, and that - and this is the most important thing - you wouldn't mind?
-- Joanna Smith Rakoff, A fortunate age: a novel
Unwin closed his dreaming eyes, but he could not occlude the vision of the man thrashing where he sat.
-- Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
Occlude owes its popular usage to the dental term occlusion, "the fitting together of the teeth of the lower jaw with the corresponding teeth of the upper jaw when the jaws are closed."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for occlude