What is a 'Closure'?

Question

I asked a question about Currying and closures were mentioned. What is a closure? How does it relate to currying?

Answer 1

Functions containing no free variables are called pure functions.

Functions containing one or more free variables are called closures.

var pure = function pure(x){
  return x 
  // only own environment is used
}

var foo = "bar"

var closure = function closure(){
  return foo 
  // foo is a free variable from the outer environment
}

^{src: https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-if-functions-without-free-variables-are-pure-are-closures-impure}