blockage

From block + -age.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈblɒkɪd͡ʒ/, [ˈblɒkɪd͡ʒ]

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈblɑkɪd͡ʒ/, [ˈblɑkɪd͡ʒ]
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈblɔkɪd͡ʒ/, [ˈblɔkɪd͡ʒ]
• Rhymes: -ɒkɪdʒ
• Hyphenation: block‧age

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, thromboembolism, or 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”).

• obstruction
• occlusion

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