I am with a few friends at a pizza spot in D.C., on Mass Ave., just about 10 blocks from the White House.
The F4 twister cut a long swath of destruction that crossed just four blocks from my house.
After seeing this trick with blocks and toys, children saw it performed with a hamster.
One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me.
One year later and 10 blocks away, my mother came into the world, the granddaughter of those pioneers who had roamed the prairie.
That, however, is neither here nor there: but it got within two blocks of there at 11.25.
Their houses were of blocks of ice and snow, and their talk sounded like dogs barking.
They were located there, and there they intended to remain like blocks of wood.
We were walled up by blocks of rock in the heart of a mountain.
The blocks necessary to construct this boat are shown in Fig. 24.
children's wooden building toys, 1821, from block (n.).
"solid piece," c.1300, from Old French bloc "log, block" of wood (13c.), via Middle Dutch bloc "trunk of a tree" or Old High German bloh, from a common Germanic source, from PIE *bhlugo-, from *bhelg- "a thick plank, beam" (see balk).
Meaning "mould for a hat" is from 1570s. Slang sense of "head" is from 1630s. Extended sense of "obstruction" is first recorded 1640s. In cricket from 1825; in U.S. football from 1912. The meaning in city block is 1796, from the notion of a "compact mass" of buildings; slang meaning "fashionable promenade" is 1869.
BLOCK. A term applied in America to a square mass of houses included between four streets. It is a very useful one. [Bartlett]
block (blŏk)
n.
Interruption, especially obstruction, of a normal physiological function.
Interruption, complete or partial, permanent or temporary, of the passage of a nervous impulse.
Atrioventricular block.
Sudden cessation of speech or a thought process without an immediate observable cause, sometimes considered a consequence of repression.
adjective
Stupid (1980s+ Students)
noun
The head (1630s+)
Related Terms
gapers' block, knock someone's block off, new kid on the block
