blockage

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English

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Etymology

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From block ‎ -age.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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blockage (countable and uncountable, plural blockages)

  1. (uncountable, countable) The state or condition of being blocked.
    • 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 133:
      Only when one has seen a Control Office at first-hand does one realise the vast amount of unsparing but largely unsung work that is behind the eventual publication, perhaps, of a paragraph in this journal's "Motive Power Miscellany" recording the appearance, within hours of the complete blockage of a main line, of many of its trains, passenger and freight, on routes quite foreign to them; and of effective emergency services either side of the disaster area.
  2. (countable) The thing that is the cause of such a state, blocking a passage.
    There was a blockage in the sewer, so we called out the plumber.
  3. (biology, medicine) Occlusion of a lumen (especially that of a blood vessel or intestine), or the thing that is causing it; as:
    1. Synonym of thrombosis, synonym of thromboembolism, or synonym of embolism.
      Blockage of circulation quickly leads to ischemia.
      In selected cases, endovascular thrombectomy can quickly remove a blockage that pharmaceutical thrombolysis can't budge.
    2. Synonym of constipation (“impairment of feces passage”).

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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  • blockade (nearly synonymous, but not interchangeably; blockade usually denotes human agency)

Translations

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