shuttered

Suddenly we were into a period of the pandemic when various shops were closing down. They were described as being shuttered. This struck me as being odd. Shops are shut in my book. Not shuttered. It turns out that this is an Americanism that has crept in.  The starting point is the physical pulling to of the shutters on the outside of the shop as part of the procedure for locking up. But the term has moved on so that various organisations can be shuttered, organisations that are in buildings where there never were any actual shutters. The stock exchange was shuttered for four days after 9/11. Various government institutions have been shuttered in response to COVID-19.  

 The Random House Dictionary gives two definitions for the verb. One is ‘to close or provide with shutters’. The other is ‘to close (a store or business operations) for the day or permanently’.