Bloc

How to spell bloc

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bloc

What does bloc mean?

1. nounA group of countries, parties, or interests united by a common purpose or agreement.

Bloc in a sentence

• The trading bloc agreed to drop tariffs on farm goods.

• Several smaller parties formed a voting bloc in parliament.

Where does bloc come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is a direct borrowing of the French noun bloc, which simply means 'block' or 'lump' and itself descends from the Middle Dutch blok, a 'log' or 'tree stump'. In French politics of the nineteenth century, bloc came to describe a solid grouping of parties or interests acting together as one mass, much as a block of stone is a single solid piece. English took the word over in this political sense around the start of the twentieth century, keeping the French spelling with a final 'c' rather than the ordinary English 'block'. That preserved 'c' is precisely the spelling trap: the everyday word 'block' and the political 'bloc' are pronounced identically, yet only the latter ends in 'c'. The distinction lets writers signal at a glance that they mean an alliance of states or factions rather than a physical object.

How the word is built

• bloc (a single, unhyphenated borrowing from French bloc 'block, group'; no internal affixes)

Words that sound like bloc

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• block: A solid, usually rectangular, piece of a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal.