blockage

Etymology

It is formed from English block + -age.^[2][3][4][5] The OED takes the base as the noun block, Etymonline as the verb.^[2][3] The noun is from Old French bloc (“log, block of wood”), and the verb comes through French bloquer (“to block, stop up”) from the same word.^[3] The OED compares blocage, recorded in the sense "wall filling" from 1547 and in the general sense of blocking only from the 19th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The state of a thoroughfare or channel being blocked: 1724, in the Weekly Journal, in the OED's revised entry.^[2] Older editions and other dictionaries date the word later: 1759 in Merriam-Webster Unabridged, 1827 in Etymonline, 1861 in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate, and 1874 in the 1989 edition of the OED.^[4][3][6][7]

Semantic evolution

The word moved from the state of being blocked to the thing that does the blocking, a sense the OED includes in the same entry.^[2][8] It is now used especially of a blood vessel or the intestine.^[6][1] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives a psychological sense, a person's inner resistance to understanding an idea, to learning or to changing a response, because of existing habits of thought.^[4]

Timeline

• 1724 – the state of a thoroughfare or channel being blocked; something that blocks it.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state of being blocked, or an act of obstructing: The blockage of the canal held up shipping for a week.^[8][4][9]
2. Something that blocks a passage; an obstruction: Surgeons removed the blockage from his artery.^[8][9][2]
3. Inner resistance to understanding an idea, learning something new or changing a response, because of habitual ways of thinking.^[4]

Related words

• blockade
• block
• -age

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin