For a time English was somewhat isolated and it lost common features of Indo-European languages which modify the start/end of a word. Or those features were diminished. E.g. German words are often long because they stack endings that turns one word type (noun, verb, adjective) into another or change the meaning slightly. One way to still do that in English is using the past participle to turn a verb into an adjective.
Further English words can have pretty board definitions. As in they encompass what non-native speakers perceive as multiple concepts. So to differentiate between two meanings at some point it became convention to use the adjective “close” to mean “near” and turn “to close” into “closed” to mean “shut”.
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