Blocked

How to spell blocked

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce blocked

What does blocked mean?

1. verbObstructed something, or prevented movement, progress, or access.
2. adjectiveObstructed or clogged so that nothing can pass through.

Blocked in a sentence

• verb

  A fallen tree blocked the only road into the village.

• adjective

  The plumber cleared the blocked drain in under an hour.

• verb

  The new firewall blocked several suspicious emails overnight.

• adjective

  A heavy cold left her with a blocked nose all weekend.

Where does blocked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word block came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French bloc, meaning a log or solid lump, which the French had themselves borrowed from a Germanic source, the Middle Dutch blok meaning a tree trunk or log. The original sense was a heavy, solid piece of wood, and from that physical lump the meaning broadened to anything that obstructs or shuts a way, since a log thrown across a path stops movement. The verb to block, meaning to obstruct, developed in English in the 1500s, and blocked is simply its regular past tense and past participle formed with the everyday English suffix -ed. The same Germanic root also gives us blockade and blockhead, both of which keep the idea of a stubborn, solid mass. The spelling is reassuringly regular: keep the ck of block and just add -ed, with no doubling needed because the consonant cluster is already there.

How the word is built

• block (from Middle Dutch blok: log, tree trunk)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)