foreclosure
Americannoun
-
foreclosures
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of foreclosure
Explanation
When a homeowner can't afford to pay her mortgage, she might face foreclosure, which is when a bank repossesses a borrower's house. A bank most often starts foreclosure proceedings against someone who's taken out a loan to buy a house when that person stops making monthly payments. The agreement a borrower makes when she gets a bank mortgage is that she'll pay a certain amount of money every month, and failing to do it means risking foreclosure. The word foreclosure comes from the Latin words fors, "out," and clore "to shut."
Vocabulary lists containing foreclosure
Case Closed: Clud, Clus
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American History II
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The Great Depression and The New Deal
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
County behind Casa Encantada, a storied Bel-Air estate that sold to former PayPal chief executive Peter Thiel for $130 million at a foreclosure auction in September.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
On a $450,000 home, 20% is $90,000, and even 5% is more than $20,000 plus closing costs, which is hard to save after a job loss or foreclosure.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026
It was, sad to say, not an uncommon story during the last recession, when the unemployment rate rose to 10% and the number of foreclosure filings hit 2.8 million in 2009.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026
County officials said at the time that the foreclosure sale was too good to pass up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026
The neighbors to the south of us moved out and their place is in foreclosure.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Months later, he signed AB 238, a Harabedian bill that provided for 12 months of mortgage relief and banned late fees, foreclosures and negative reports to credit bureaus for homeowners who receive it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
We don’t have to live in a world where people profit from tragedy, be it wildfires or a child with cancer, housing foreclosures or weapons manufacturing.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
In the most extreme cases, they are pursuing foreclosures on these properties.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
The figure is also the highest since the first quarter of 2020, when pandemic-era mortgage-relief measures and stimulus payments first led to a huge drop in foreclosures.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 2, 2026
The various bonds you make from those loans will go bad not as the loans go bad but months later, after a lot of tedious foreclosures and bankruptcies and forced sales.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
