bloc
[blok]
- a group of persons, businesses, etc., united for a particular purpose.
- a group of legislators, usually of both major political parties, who vote together for some particular interest: the farm bloc.
- a group of nations that share common interests and usually act in concert in international affairs: the Soviet bloc.
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Origin of bloc
Synonyms
See more synonyms for bloc on Thesaurus.comcoalition.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for bloc
Contemporary Examples
Two years later, he had released all Soviet dissidents from prison and was beginning to loosen the reins on Soviet bloc countries.
Bloc voting for allies, and totally blanking your political foes, became the norm.
If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.
But did The Hague just witness the emergence of a new bloc to bloc rivalry, triggered by events in the Ukraine?
In 1945, the place housed captured Nazis but by 1948 most of its prisoners were Soviet bloc spies.
Historical Examples
They relate to potential exports from other countries to the Soviet bloc.
East-West Trade TrendsHarold E. Stassen
Only $98 of the total went to Communist China, all the rest to the European bloc.
East-West Trade TrendsHarold E. Stassen
This Bloc consisted of various parties of the Russian bourgeoisie.
Our RevolutionLeon Trotzky
That is what the group or bloc system is, a resolution into component parts.
Behind the MirrorsClinton W. Gilbert
But the whole are really a bloc, the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block."
A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1George Saintsbury
bloc
- a group of people or countries combined by a common interest or aimthe Soviet bloc
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Word Origin
C20: from French: block
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for bloc
n.
1903, in reference to alliances in Continental politics, from French bloc "group, block," from Old French bloc "piece of wood" (see block (n.)).
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper