blockhouse
Americannoun
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blockhouses
plural
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Military. a fortified structure with ports or loopholes through which defenders may direct gunfire.
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Also called garrison house. (formerly) a building, usually of hewn timber and with a projecting upper story, having loopholes for musketry.
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a house built of squared logs.
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Rocketry. a structure near a launching site for rockets, generally made of heavily reinforced concrete, for housing and protecting personnel, electronic controls, and auxiliary apparatus before and during launching operations.
noun
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(formerly) a wooden fortification with ports or loopholes for defensive fire, observation, etc
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a concrete structure strengthened to give protection against enemy fire, with apertures to allow defensive gunfire
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a building constructed of logs or squared timber
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a reinforced concrete building close to a rocket-launching site for protecting personnel and equipment during launching
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of blockhouse
1505–15; < Middle Dutch blochuus, equivalent to bloc block + huus house
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Pte Malcolm, a stretcher bearer, was found when unidentified remains were recovered from a shell hole outside a German blockhouse in Fusilier Wood, near Klein-Zillebeke, Belgium.
From BBC ● May 10, 2023
Others are posing on the porch of an officer’s house and in front of the blockhouse, which are still on the property.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 25, 2023
On the other side of the draw was a similar position and further inland above the exit from the beach was another concrete blockhouse with its 88-gun pointing down the approach.
From Fox News ● Jun. 3, 2019
By one p.m. they were strapped into their couches, familiar from hours spent in vacuum-chamber tests in Houston, and Slayton left for the blockhouse, where he would monitor the test.
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2019
“We spent all day building our blockhouse, and Mom said Quentin was too tired to go home. He’s sleeping in my bed.”
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
It’s a sure sign that greed, not fear, is the current phase of the arc of Mr. McWilliams’s pendulum that nobody can be sure whether these digital blockhouses will ever generate a dollar of profit.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
Beyond the beach rise the bluffs where the Germans built their first line of defenses with trenches and blockhouses.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 4, 2019
We passed dilapidated blockhouses, children taking bucket baths, and old women spreading rice over tattered tarpaulins to dry.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 12, 2015
Climb any hill and you may well find pillboxes, bunkers, blockhouses; stroll through any freshly plowed field and you might just spot shrapnel, cartridges and bullets atop the furrows.
From New York Times ● Aug. 21, 2014
Although the attempt to fire the blockhouses had been foiled, Jack, thinking over the matter, saw that the feat would not have been impossible with the exercise of a little common sense coupled with dash.
From Samba A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo by Herbert Strang
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
