Misclosure

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A gap or discrepancy that appears when a surveyed loop of measurements fails to return exactly to its starting point
2. The mismatch left over when the calculated coordinates of a closed traverse do not come back to their origin
3. A failure of a surveyed circuit of lines to close precisely, producing a measurable error in the final position

Etymology: "Misclosure" is built from the prefix "mis-" joined to "closure," and its meaning follows directly from the parts. "Mis-" comes from Old English and carries the sense of wrongly or badly, as in "misread" or "mistake," while "closure" comes from the Latin "clausura," meaning a closing or enclosure, from "claudere," to shut. Together they describe a closing that has gone wrong, most often a failure of a figure to close up properly. The word is most at home in surveying and mathematics, where it names the error left over when a series of measurements is meant to return to its starting point and does not. A surveyor who walks a boundary and ends up short of the first corner has a misclosure, and the size of that gap tells them how inaccurate the work was. The same idea appears in traverse calculations, where a closed loop of measured lines should sum to zero.