Phrase guide

Kleene closure

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

No pronunciation record was provided for this word.

1

noun

Meaning 1

The set of all strings of finite length made up of elements of a given set. (Then the Kleene closure is said to be of that given set. For a given set S, its Kleene closure may be denoted as S^*. The Kleene closure includes a string of zero length. Strings are equivalent to ordered tuples but written without the parentheses and commas.)

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Topics: computer, computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, science, sciences

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Named in honor of Stephen Cole Kleene (1909–1994), an American mathematician. The “closure” part comes from the fact that a Kleene closure is closed with respect to concatenation; cf. free monoid.

Across languages

Translations

1 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Bulgarian: звезда на Клини (zvezda na Klini) — all strings of finite length made up of elements of a given set