1. A procedure used to measure comprehension or text difficulty, in which a person is called upon to supply elements that have been systematically deleted from a text.
2. Based on or being a test of reading comprehension in which the test taker is asked to supply words that have been systematically deleted from a text.

It is characterized by a passage of text, whether it be prepared beforehand, or taken verbatim from the text to be examined; then with the removal of certain key words, it is replaced with blanks. From this presentation, students are required to fill in the missing words, demonstrating an understanding of the text material.

3. Etymology: an alteration of closure.