/blɒk/, /blɑk/
OriginFrom Middle English blok (“log, stump, solid piece”), from Old French bloc (“log, block”), from Middle Dutch blok (“treetrunk”), from Old Dutch *blok (“log”), from Proto-West Germanic *blokk, from Proto-Germanic *blukką (“beam, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵ- (“thick plank, beam, pile, prop”). Cognate with Old Frisian blok, Old Saxon blok, Old High German bloh, bloc (“block”), Old English bolca (“gangway of a ship, plank”), Old Norse bǫlkr (“divider, partition”). More at balk. See also bloc, bulk.
- A substantial, often approximately cuboid, piece of any substance.
“a block of ice; a block of stone”
“She picked up the block and examined it.”
- A chopping block: a cuboid base for cutting or beheading.
“Anne Boleyn placed her head on the block and awaited her execution.”
“You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year.”
- A wig block: a simplified head model upon which wigs are worn.
“Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money.”
- A mould on which hats, bonnets, etc., are shaped.
“He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.”
- datedA piece of hard wood on which a stereotype or electrotype plate is mounted.
- A case or frame housing one or more sheaves (pulleys), used with ropes to increase or redirect force, for example as part of lifting gear or a sailing ship's rigging. See also block and tackle.
- A section of split logs used as fuel.
“She said, 'I hope I shall not be left to kill myself, but It would be no more sin to kill me, than to put a block on the fire.'”
“"Aye," said the farmer putting another block on the fire as he spoke […]”
“Dawn and Shorty would cut this tree into blocks, while Randy and Matt went back for more. Dawn and Shorty made a good team on the crosscut, so when another log arrived, the first was almost completely”
- A set of sheets (of paper) joined together at one end, forming a cuboid shape.
- The perch on which a bird of prey is kept.
- In Conway's Game of Life, a still life consisting of four living cells arranged in a two-by-two square.
“But there are many queen bee configurations in which the debris is neutralized, including placement of a block or eater near the bee's turnaround point, or placing two queen bees in a line or at right”
“Perhaps the simplest puffer known is the following period 20 puffer based on the period 20 spaceship, which creates blocks.”
“Blocks have a couple of unusual properties: they are cleanly destroyed by an incoming glider on any one of six adjacent paths, and none of the possible collisions include any output gliders, so you ca”
- A physical area or extent of something, often rectangular or approximately rectangular.
“a block of text; a block of colour; a block of land”
- A joined group of four (or in some cases nine) postage stamps, forming a roughly square shape.
- A discrete group of vines in a vineyard, often distinguished from others by variety, clone, canopy training method, irrigation infrastructure, or some combination thereof.
- A logical extent or region; a grouping or apportionment of like things treated together as a unit.
“a block of data; a block of seven days; a block reservation”
“The great game of golf offered an antidote to the inevitable dead space — blocks of difficult-to-use hours, pre- and postflight — that are one of business travel’s biggest drags.”
- A logical data storage unit containing one or more physical sectors.
“After one disk is mapped, the next block starts at address 0 on the next disk.”
“The difficulty of each puzzle would increase as the number of miners increased, which would keep production to one block of transactions roughly every 10 minutes. In addition, the size of each block b”
- A region of code in a program that acts as a single unit, such as a function or loop.
“With a foreach block, you don't need to create an explicit counter variable.”
- A fixed-length group of bits making up part of a message.
- A portion of a macromolecule, comprising many units, that has at least one feature not present in adjacent portions.
- A section of a railroad where the block system is used.
- A contiguous range of Unicode code points used to encode characters of a specific type; can be of any size evenly divisible by 16, up to 65,536 (a full plane).
“The "Specials" block comprises the sixteen codepoints from U+FFF0 through U+FFFF.”
- A yeargroup at Eton College.
- A contiguous group of urban lots of property, typically several acres in extent, not crossed by public streets.
“I’m going for a walk around the block.”
- The distance from one street to another in a city or suburb that is built (approximately) to a grid pattern.
“The place you are looking for is two long blocks east and one short block north.”
“The Witness: Well, I have one that is 8/10 of a mile away; I have one that is just about another 8/10 of a mile away; I have one that is three blocks away; I have one that is four blocks away; I have ”
“This uphill trail is like a battlefield. Anne offers to carry the older woman's backpack. […] I couldn't walk three blocks with the Danish woman's bulging backpack.”
- A cuboid or approximately cuboid building.
“a block of flats; a tower block; an office block; a toilet block; a shower block”
“He turned back to the scene before him and the enormous new block of council dwellings. The design was some way after Corbusier but the block was built up on plinths and resembled an Atlantic liner sw”
- A cellblock.
- Something that prevents something from passing.
“There’s a block in the pipe that means the water can’t get through.”
- Interference or obstruction of cognitive processes.
“I work with writers/artists/others using artistic skills as a tool to explore blocks and free creative energy.”
“a mental block”
“writer’s block”
- Any point on the board where two or more men rest, and consequently an opponent may not land.
- An action to interfere with the movement of an opposing player or of the object of play (ball, puck).
“The match proved an unedifying spectacle until Spurs won a corner following their first move of real quality, John Mensah making an important block with Jermain Defoe poised to strike.”
- A shot played by holding the bat vertically in the path of the ball, so that it loses momentum and drops to the ground.
- The position of a player or bat when guarding the wicket.
- A blockhole.
- The popping crease.
- A defensive play by one or more players meant to deflect a spiked ball back to the hitter’s court.
- The portion of the movement where a gymnast pushes off the vault.
“While it might seem like she should bend her elbows in order to spring up — the way you bend your knees in order to jump — a good block actually requires the gymnast to keep her arms straight and use ”
- A temporary or permanent ban that prevents access to an online account or service, or connection to or from a designated telephone number, IP address, or similar.
“The Wiktionary page-blanking vandal was hit with an indefinite block.”
“He was blocked from playing Roblox due to cheating and scamming.”
“I’ve put a block on calls from that number.”
- slangThe human head.
“I’ll knock your block off!”
- UKSolitary confinement.
- obsoleteA blockhead; a stupid person; a dolt.
- alt-of, misspellingMisspelling of bloc.
- transitiveTo fill or obstruct (something) so that it is not possible to pass.
“The pipe was blocked by leaves.”
“You’re blocking the road – I can’t get through!”
“However, at Manchester the junctions and signals are so close that a train running more slowly over several junctions simply blocks those junctions for longer, preventing other trains moving.”
- transitiveTo prevent (something or someone) from passing.
“A broken-down car is blocking the traffic.”
- transitiveTo prevent (something from happening or someone from doing something).
“His plan to take over the business was blocked by the boss.”
“Mr. Ip, who was the chairman of the Yau Tsim Mong district council, became a target of protesters in July after he blocked debate on the extradition bill that incited the protests this summer.”
- transitiveTo impede (an opponent or opponent’s play).
“He blocked the basketball player’s shot.”
“The offensive linemen tried to block the blitz.”
- transitiveTo specify the positions and movements of the actors for (a section of a play or film).
“It was very difficult to block this scene convincingly.”
- transitiveTo hit with a block.
- intransitiveTo play a block shot.
- transitiveTo bar (impose a ban on a person or bot, etc.) from connecting via telephone, instant messaging, etc., or from accessing an online account or service, or similar.
“I tried to send you a message, but you’ve blocked me!”
“The user who started the edit war was blocked for a day to cool off.”
“He messages her occasionally on Facebook, sending photos of grandkids and puppies he’s raised. Every year, he wishes her a happy birthday. She has not replied, but she has also not blocked him.”
- transitiveTo bar (a message or communication), or bar connection with (an online account or service, a designated telephone number, IP address, etc.).
“They’ve blocked all calls to international numbers.”
“Most Internet services have been blocked.”
- intransitiveTo wait for some condition to become true.
“When the condition expression is false, the thread blocks on the condition variable.”
“Post is a “fire and forget” where the UI thread work is performed asynchronously; Send is synchronous in that the call blocks until the UI thread work has been performed.”
- transitiveTo stretch or mould (a knitted item, a hat, etc.) into the desired shape.
“I blocked the mittens by wetting them and pinning them to a shaped piece of cardboard.”
- transitiveTo shape or sketch out roughly.
“When drawing a scene, first block the main features, and then fill in the detail.”
- intransitiveTo experience mental block or creative block.
“As I started to read the stories I thought, "I have to write my story," but I blocked on it for six months. I couldn't write anything else while I couldn't write my coming out story. It seemed to me a”
- obsolete, slang, transitiveTo knock the hat of (a person) down over their eyes.
- countable, uncountableA surname.
“The major themes in Francesca Lia Block's books include the necessity of love and the acceptance of and celebration of racial and sexual difference.”
“Zachary Block chats with Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen about their new show, Portlandia, which airs on IFC, Fridays at 10:30.”
- countable, uncountableA surname from German
- countable, uncountableA surname from Dutch
- countable, uncountableAn English surname
- countable, uncountableA Jewish surname
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Champaign County, Illinois, United States.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Miami County, Kansas, United States.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Campbell County, Tennessee, United States.
Formsblocks(plural) · blocke(alternative, obsolete) · blocks(present, singular, third-person) · blocking(participle, present) · blocked(participle, past) · blocked(past) · Blocks(plural)