What does cloze mean?
"Cloze" refers to a fill-in-the-blank exercise in which selected words are deleted from a written passage and the reader must supply them, relying on surrounding context, grammar, and vocabulary knowledge. It is most often encountered as part of a phrase such as "cloze test" or "cloze passage," where it works as an adjective describing the type of task rather than standing alone as a noun. The technique originated in the 1950s, when psychologist Wilson Taylor adapted the Gestalt concept of closure — the mind's tendency to complete incomplete patterns — into a method for measuring how well readers understand a text. Because success on a cloze depends on integrating meaning across whole sentences rather than memorizing isolated definitions, teachers and researchers use it widely to assess reading comprehension, second-language proficiency, and vocabulary in context. The word is pronounced exactly like "close," but it belongs firmly to the specialized vocabulary of education and linguistics.
nounA fill-in-the-blank exercise in which words are omitted from a passage and the reader must supply them, used chiefly to test or improve reading comprehension.
- A fill-in-the-blank exercise in which words are systematically deleted from a text and learners must restore them using context and linguistic clues.
"The teacher began each lesson with a cloze based on a short news article, deleting every fifth word for students to complete."
"The standardized exam included a cloze passage with twenty missing words testing vocabulary in context."
"Researchers found that completing a daily cloze improved students' ability to infer meaning from unfamiliar texts."
The plural is rare in practice, since speakers more commonly refer to "cloze tests" or "cloze activities" than to multiple "clozes."
"The workbook contains thirty clozes of increasing difficulty."
It's pronounced exactly like "close," but it was coined in the 1950s from Gestalt psychology's idea of "closure" — your brain's drive to complete a pattern with gaps in it.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cloze
The word "cloze" was coined in the early 1950s by American psychologist Wilson L. Taylor, who derived it from "closure" — the Gestalt-psychology principle that people instinctively complete incomplete patterns. By dropping letters from "closure" to form a new word, Taylor signaled that the exercise itself mirrors this completion process: readers mentally close the gaps left by deleted words. It shares its ultimate origin with the Latin verb "claudere," meaning "to close," which also gave English words such as "closure," "enclose," and "conclude."
How cloze is actually used
Used almost exclusively in educational, linguistic, and assessment contexts. Often functions attributively as an adjective before another noun (a cloze test, a cloze passage), which is its most common form of use. Rarely heard outside language-teaching circles.
Easily confused with cloze
"Close" is an ordinary English word meaning near or to shut, while "cloze" is a technical term in language teaching for a fill-in-the-blank exercise; despite the identical pronunciation, they are unrelated in meaning.