Etymologically
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blockade

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 31 October 2026 at 05:43. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • UK: /blɒˈkeɪd/[1]
  • US: /blɑˈkeɪd/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English block + -ade,[2][3][4][5][6] the verb block with a French-looking ending.[3] The OED, revised in 2014, thinks it was probably modelled on Dutch blocquade (1663, now blokkade) or German Blockade (mid-17th century);[2] others point to the ending of ambuscade[5][7][8] or of barricade.[9] The French word for it is French blocus,[3][2] recorded in Middle French as blochus in 1376 for a fort built by a besieging force, and used for the sealing off of a place from 1663; it comes from Middle Dutch blochuus (“blockhouse”), a compound of bloc (“block”) and huus (“house”).[2] The verb is formed from the noun.[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The sealing off of a place by hostile forces so that no supplies or people can go in or out: 1659, in a news sheet, Occurrences from Forraigne Parts.[2] Etymonline dates the noun to the 1690s and the verb to the 1670s,[3] Merriam-Webster the noun to 1683,[4] and Dictionary.com to 1670–80.[6]

Semantic evolution

The word was military from the start, used of armies and above all of fleets closing a harbour or coast.[2][4] Johnson (1755) defined it as a siege carried on by shutting up the place.[10] From 1683 it was used of any barrier or obstruction, and in the United States of a stoppage on a railway or a barrier on a river.[2] The verb, recorded from 1684, had its figurative sense "to obstruct, block up" by 1696.[2] In Britain from 1821 to 1882 a blockade was also a coastal force patrolling against smugglers.[2] In the American South the word was turned to illicit distilling: blockade (whiskey), recorded from 1867, was moonshine, and blockading, from 1883, was making it;[11][12] a 1968 source in the Dictionary of American Regional English explains the name as a holdover from the days of the blockades.[12] Blockade-runner dates from 1863.[3] Since 1949 pharmacology has used the word for the blocking of nerve impulses or of the binding of a substance by a drug, as in beta blockade.[2][8]

Timeline

  • 1659 – the sealing off of a place by hostile forces.[2]
  • 1683 – any barrier or obstruction.[2]
  • 1684 – verb, to subject a place to a blockade.[2]
  • 1696 – verb, figurative, to obstruct.[2]
  • 1821 – a coastal force against smuggling (obsolete by 1882).[2]
  • 1863 – blockade-runner.[3]
  • 1867 – US South, illicit whiskey.[11][12]
  • 1949 – pharmacology, the blocking of nerve impulses by a drug.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The isolation of a port, coast or country by hostile ships or troops, to stop goods and people from entering or leaving: The navy kept up the blockade through the winter.[4][8][2]
  2. Anything that prevents access or progress; an obstruction.[8][4][2]
  3. (medicine) The inhibition of a nerve's action, or of the effect of a hormone or drug, by another drug.[8][2]
  4. (US, chiefly Southern) Illicitly distilled whiskey; moonshine.[12][11]

Verb

  1. To subject a place to a blockade: Warships blockaded the harbour for three months.[4][8][2]
  2. To obstruct or block the way to something.[8][4][2]

Word family

  • blockader
  • nonblockaded
  • unblockaded
  • counterblockade

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  11. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  12. ^ a b c d Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press