'Preclude' means closing a door before someone reaches it — Latin 'prae-' (before) + 'claudere' (to shut).
To prevent from happening; to make impossible in advance; to rule out beforehand.
From Latin 'praeclūdere' (to close off, to shut off, to hinder), composed of 'prae-' (before, in front of) and 'claudere' (to shut, to close). The PIE root is *klāu- (hook, peg). The literal image is shutting a door before someone reaches it — closing off a path in advance so that passage becomes impossible. The word
The legal doctrine of 'estoppel' (from Old French 'estopper,' to stop up) performs the same function as 'preclusion' — it closes off a legal argument before it can be made. Both words, from entirely different roots, use the same metaphor: blocking a path by shutting a barrier in advance.