wall off

wall off (third-person singular simple present walls off, present participle walling off, simple past and past participle walled off)

1. To separate with a wall.

   The previous owners had walled off two rooms, making an apartment.

2. (figurative, by extension) To isolate completely.

   Early protectionists tried to wall off the country from foreign trade.

   • 1990 November 12, Celestine Bohlen, “Ethnic Rivalries Revive in East Europe”, in The New York Times‎, section A, page 1:

     Nationalist politics, walled off for decades by an artificial silence, have emerged practically unscathed from the ruins of Communism's enforced internationalism.