Block

1. a solid mass of wood, stone, etc., usually with one or more flat or approximately flat faces. 2. a hollow masonry building unit of cement, terra cotta, etc.: a wall made of concrete blocks. 3. one of a set of cube-shaped pieces of wood, plastic, or the like, used as a child's toy in building. 4. a mold or piece on which something is shaped or kept in shape: a hat block. 5. a piece of wood used in the art of making woodcuts or wood engravings. 6. Printing. the base on which a plate is mounted to make it type-high. 7. a projection left on a squared stone to provide a means of lifting it. 8. a short length of plank serving as a bridging, as between joists. 9. a stump or wooden structure on which a condemned person is beheaded: Mary Stuart went bravely to the block. 10. auction block. 11. Machinery. a part enclosing one or more freely rotating, grooved pulleys, about which ropes or chains pass to form a hoisting or hauling tackle. 12. an obstacle, obstruction, or hindrance: His stubbornness is a block to all my efforts. 13. the state or condition of being obstructed; blockage: The traffic block lasted several hours. 14. Pathology. an obstruction, as of a nerve. heart block. 15. Sports. a hindering of an opponent's actions. 16. a quantity, portion, or section taken as a unit or dealt with at one time: a large block of theater tickets. 17. a small section of a city, town, etc., enclosed by neighboring and intersecting streets: She lives on my block. 18. the length of one side of such a section: We walked two blocks over. 19. Chiefly British. a large building divided into separate apartments, offices, shops, etc. 20. a large number of bonds or shares of stock sold together as a single unit. 21. Computers. a group of data stored as a unit on an external storage medium and handled as a unit by the computer for input or output: This file has 20 records per block. a section of storage locations in a computer allocated to a particular set of instructions or data. a group of consecutive machine words organized as a unit and guiding a particular computer operation, especially with reference to input and output. (on a flow chart) a symbol representing an operation, device, or instruction in a computer program. 22. Railroads. any of the short lengths into which a track is divided for signaling purposes. 23. Philately. a group of four or more unseparated stamps, not in a strip. 24. Slang. a person's head. 25. Glassmaking. a wooden or metal cup for blocking a gather. 26. an obstruction or stoppage in mental processes or speech, especially when related to stress, emotional conflict, etc. 27. writer's block. 28. Geology. any large, angular mass of solid rock. fault block. 29. (in Canada) a wild or remote area of land that has not yet been surveyed: the Peace River block. 30. Automotive. cylinder block. 31. Falconry. a low perch to which a falcon is tethered outdoors.