Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Block   /blɑk/   Listen
Block

noun
1.
A solid piece of something (usually having flat rectangular sides).
2.
A rectangular area in a city surrounded by streets and usually containing several buildings.  Synonym: city block.
3.
A three-dimensional shape with six square or rectangular sides.  Synonym: cube.
4.
A number or quantity of related things dealt with as a unit.  "He held a large block of the company's stock"
5.
Housing in a large building that is divided into separate units.
6.
(computer science) a sector or group of sectors that function as the smallest data unit permitted.
7.
An inability to remember or think of something you normally can do; often caused by emotional tension.  Synonym: mental block.
8.
A simple machine consisting of a wheel with a groove in which a rope can run to change the direction or point of application of a force applied to the rope.  Synonyms: pulley, pulley-block, pulley block.
9.
A metal casting containing the cylinders and cooling ducts of an engine.  Synonyms: cylinder block, engine block.
10.
An obstruction in a pipe or tube.  Synonyms: blockage, closure, occlusion, stop, stoppage.
11.
A platform from which an auctioneer sells.  Synonym: auction block.
12.
The act of obstructing or deflecting someone's movements.  Synonym: blocking.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Block" Quotes from Famous Books



... Street, which, under Time's transmuting and ironical fingers, has since become a noisy boiler-shop. There their first child was born. Subsequently they moved to the house, No. 634 South Fifth Street (now Broadway), which is one in the middle of a block of houses pointed out in St. Louis as the birthplace of Eugene Field. Although Eugene himself went with the photographer and pointed out the house, his brother Roswell strenuously maintains that Eugene was born before the family moved to the Walsh row, so-called, and that to the boiler-shop ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... certain building ought to be. The chances are that there is no special reason why the bank in your story should be located on the corner of the street, and the director might be able to locate a bank suitable for the purpose of the scene in question within a block or two of the studio. If there is a really important reason for having the bank on the corner, he may have to go a mile or more away from the studio to find one; and, inasmuch as it is frequently the case ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... strength a little however, I suggested it was best to limit our efforts to the districts alone. We took a map of the city and we cut up the districts into blocks with a young man at the head of each block. He was to make a list of all the young voters and keep as closely in touch as possible with the political gossip of both parties. Over him there was to be a street captain and over him a district captain and ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... the upper part, b, of the prostate, and to act like a stopper to the neck of the bladder. The body a being moveable, it will be perceived how, while the bladder is distended with urine, the pressure from above may block up the neck of the organ with this part, and thus cause complete retention, which, on the introduction of a catheter, becomes readily relieved by the instrument pushing the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... outline, crisp and spirited in detail. Even under the Stuarts, Inigo Jones and his great successor Wren executed some noble works in this material. Unfortunately for art, Parliament in 1625 established the rectangular dimensions of bricks, which thenceforward were moulded on one dreary model,—a block of clay nine by four by two and one-half inches. In 1784 Parliament again interfered, and levied heavy taxes upon all bricks modelled, whether such bricks were spoiled in the baking or not. This tax ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... opposite to us during dinner, and had attracted my attention by the way he looked at my partner from time to time. It was a difficult look to describe, because there was neither admiration nor interest in it, approval nor disapproval; he might have looked at a block of wood in exactly the same way, and it could hardly have been less responsive. Once, however, their eyes did meet, and then the glance became one of friendly recognition on both sides; but even after that he still continued to look in the same queer way, and it was this fact ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... stone pedestals, each of which is inscribed with the posthumous title of Iyeyasu, the name of the giver, and a legend of the offering—all the gifts of daimiyo—a holy water cistern made of a solid block of granite, and covered by a roof resting on twenty square granite pillars, and a bronze bell, lantern, and candelabra of marvellous workmanship, offered by the kings of Corea and Liukiu. On the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... camp. They told their story, but were not believed. "The woman has killed herself and my brothers will not tell me," said the husband. However, the whole village broke camp and came back to the place where they had left the woman. Sure enough, she sat there still, a block of stone. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... long hair, shaggy. It is so called from a fancied resemblance to a wig on a barber's block. A description is hardly necessary with a photograph before us. They always remind us of a congregation of goose eggs standing on end. This plant cannot be confounded with any other, and the finder is the happy possessor ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... and as Zaidos handed him the packet he disappeared, the night swallowing him in its blackness. Zaidos crawled to the door and, flat on the floor, put his head out the opening into the street. All was quiet. The sentry marched up and down the long block with the dragging slowness of a weary man. The ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... pure, young, healthy flesh, and the muscles of the beautiful mouth so delicately cut, it seems like a thing that breathes. She did every stroke of the work with her own small hands, except knocking off the corners of the block of marble. She employed a man to do that; but as he was unused to work for sculptors, she did not venture to have him approach within several inches of the surface she intended to cut. Slight girl as she was, she wielded for eight or ten hours a ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... took the branch that led south out of the park. It opened into a high-banked macadamized avenue bordered by broken wooden sidewalks. The vast flat land began to design itself, as the sun faded out behind the irregular lines of buildings two miles to the west. A block south, a huge red chimney was pouring tranquilly its volume of dank smoke into the air. On the southern horizon a sooty cloud hovered above the mills of South Chicago. But, except for the monster chimney, the country ahead of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... The trail of the gun consisted of a solid block of wood some 12 feet long; so that if one laid the gun to any long range (in most over 7,000 yards, I think) the oil cylinder under the gun, on trying to elevate it, would bring-up against this trail and prevent laying. This therefore necessitated ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... summit was a dreadful block of jasper, convex at the top, so that when the human victim was laid upon his back and held down, the breast was pushed upwards, ready for the priest to make one deep slashing cut and snatch out the heart. Near the sacrificial ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... gate into the yard. Those who came to call at the Farm on wheels stopped their vehicle at the end of the avenue outside, by the worn hitching-post with its iron chain and ring, and climbed an old-fashioned stile right from the carriage-block to a straight walk of bricks, laid in a queer criss-cross pattern, that ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... kahv-ve, which is unlikely. The change from a to o, in my opinion, is better accounted for as an imperfect appreciation. The exact sound of a in Arabic and other Oriental languages is that of the English short U, as in "cuff." This sound, so easy to us, is a great stumbling-block to other nations. I judge that Dutch koffie and kindred forms are imperfect attempts at the notation of a vowel which the writers could not grasp. It is clear that the French type is more correct. The Germans have corrected their koffee, which they may have ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... bald-headed, and a vulture—your vulture, probably—who was a great amateur in tortoises, mistook at a distance his head for a block of stone, and let a tortoise, which was shrunk up in his shell, fall ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... of inconsistency, therefore, to exalt the name of Jesus in words and professions, and speak lightly of, or disregard any one of His appointments. It is not only inconsistent; it is disloyal and wicked. This is the great stumbling-block in our way to the indorsement of Mr. Moody and such men. We care not what else he may be, we can indorse no man who tears in two the commission of Jesus Christ. He who refuses to "speak as the oracles of God speak," in order to promote his work, is not doing the work that God would ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... and this hen was not to be fattened. Note the cunning of the law: The useful hen and her unlaid eggs could be sacrificed while the unproductive rooster was allowed to thrive to no purpose, immune from the butcher's block. This set the shrewd surgeon to thinking; he transformed a rooster into a capon by his surgical trick. The emasculated bird grew fat without his owner committing any infraction of the Roman law against fattening chickens. Of course the capon, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... between them, and the tall cock nearly sent his spur through him," continued the officer. "I s'pose this means the Tower and the block, doesn't it, Murray? or shall we have the job to shoot ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... river is about four hundred yards wide, and where the stream flows with a current more rapid than usual, it widens into a large bend or basin, at the extremity of which a black rock, rising perpendicularly from the right shore, seems to run wholly across. So completely did it appear to block up the passage, that the travellers could not, as they approached, see where the water escaped; except that the current appeared to be drawn with peculiar velocity towards the left of the rock, where there was a great roaring. On landing, to survey it, they found that, for about half a ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... the time. It was a strong thing to say that the Articles left a great deal of formal Roman language untouched; but to work this out in dry, bald, technical logic, on the face of it, narrow in scope, often merely ingenious, was even a greater stumbling-block. It was, undoubtedly, a great miscalculation, such as men of keen and far-reaching genius sometimes make. They mistake the strength and set of the tide; they imagine that minds round them are going as fast as their own. We can see, looking back, that such an interpretation ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... dream that possesses him now; The morn of his doom has succeeded the night, And the damp dews of death gather fast on his brow. He hears in the distance a faint muffled drum, And the low sullen boom of the death-tolling bell; The block is prepared, and the headsman is come, And the victim, bareheaded, walks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... his wicket, and that accomplished bowler, Fortune, ball in hand, at the other end; will it be swift round-hand, or a slow twister, or a shooter, or a lob? Eye and hand, foot and bat, he must stand tense, yet flexible, lithe and swift as lightning, ready for everything—cut, block, slip, or hit to leg. It was not altogether pleasant. The stakes were enormous! and the suspense by no ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... (not Perle-barley) and pour scalding water upon it, and wash it well therein, and strain it from the water, & put it into the Corner of a Linnen-cloth and tie it up fast there, and strike it a dozen or twenty blows against a firm table or block, to make it tender by such bruising it, as in the Countrey is used with wheat to make frumenty. Then put it into a large skillet with three pints of good milk. Boil this till at least half be consumed, and that it become ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... houses, and hidden from it by a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs forming a single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the poorest order of rustic laborers; and the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dying,' wrote Garrick in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, and she had not to apologise, like Charles the Second, for the unconscionable time she was about it. It is a little crude to attribute her demise to Jeremy Collier and his Short View—a block painted to look like a thunderbolt. It is not a matter of decency, of alteration or improvement in manners. A comedy might be wholly Congrevean without a coarse word from beginning to end. It is a matter of the exclusion (not ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... other, without manifesting much surprise, said, 'I thank you; and if you will wait a minute, I will give you a receipt for that favour.' Then, gathering up his pipe, and taking off his coat and hat, he laid them on a stepping-block which stood near, and rubbing his hands together, he advanced towards the coachman in an attitude of offence, holding his hands crossed very near to his face. The coachman, who probably expected anything but such a movement from a person of the age and appearance of the individual ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... as we neared the bridge, and we to came a dead stop. I set it down to some ordinary block of traffic, and with a touch of annoyance: for Farrell by this time was arguing himself out as a victim of circumstances, and with a feebleness of sophistry that tried the patience. I remember saying "The long and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... principal business streets of all these towns one sees vast buildings. They are usually called blocks, and are often so denominated in large letters on their front, as Portland Block, Devereux Block, Buel's Block. Such a block may face to two, three, or even four streets, and, as I presume, has generally been a matter of one special speculation. It may be divided into separate houses, or kept for a single purpose, such as ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... have the same Consolation in the ill Success of his Play, as Dr. South tells us a Physician has at the Death of a Patient, That he was killed secundum artem. Our inimitable Shakespear is a Stumbling-Block to the whole Tribe of these rigid Criticks. Who would not rather read one of his Plays, where there is not a single Rule of the Stage observed, than any Production of a modern Critick, where there is not one of them violated? Shakespear was indeed born with all the Seeds of Poetry, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... got a block of a hundred shares myself, which I bought eighteen months ago for a song. I give you my word I didn't think it worth more than a dollar or two a share—what I gave—when I learned not long since that they'd struck it rich, and I was no longer ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger

... she is, breathes a prayer, that the Lord may have mercy on that soul, as "clear as diamond, and as hard," as she said of herself. That last scene, too, before the fatal block—it could not be altogether acting. Mrs. Leigh had learned many a priceless lesson in the last seven years; might not Mary Stuart have learned something in seventeen? And Mrs. Leigh had been a courtier, and knew, as far as a chaste Englishwoman ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... little use of this money; his was a simple, serious, fun-loving nature, and all his early training had made for plain living and economy. And so for years he and his mother had boarded in a brownstone boarding-house in the quiet block west of Lexington Avenue up the street. They spent very little on themselves. In fact, Joe was too busy. He was all absorbed in the printery—he worked early and late—and of recent years in the stress of business ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... desperate—but with such reenforcements, the Austrians would hold it. The crackle of small arms after a slight lull rose in intensity to a continuous roar. And while Renwick was making the end of his rope fast around a huge granite block, there was a tremendous explosion which seemed to tear ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... that the approach was his own, that the wording was his own, produced not the least change upon the final result. The idea, the motif, was identical in each; identical in every particular, identical in effect, in suggestion. The two tales were one. That was the fact, the unshakable fact, the block of granite that a malicious fortune had flung athwart her little ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... immense avenue rectangular sepulchral caverns, containing each a black coffin, but a coffin as if for a mastodon. And all these coffins, so sombre and so alike, are square shaped too, severely simple like so many boxes; but made out of a single block of rare granite that gleams like marble. They are entirely without ornament. It is necessary to look closely to distinguish on the smooth walls the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the rows of little figures, little ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... sometimes striding out upon stilt-like piles, their multiform gables "fantastically set" with a total disregard of uniformity and extent of facade that would have been the death of Baron Haussmann or the builder of a Philadelphia block. Nevertheless, there is a pervading tone and style which would identify a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine. Indeed, many of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we cannot comprehend on earth. Let not that be a stumbling-block, and think not that it may serve as a justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you cannot. You will know that yourself hereafter, for you will behold all things truly ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... (stolen from the settlers) stone hatchets, arrow heads, in fact, implements of war and for the chase, but all arranged in the neatest order, and apparently every man's property carefully put together. At one end was a small image, or rather a head, carved rudely out of a block of wood; round the neck was hung the case of a watch, and on a board close by, the works of the watch, which had been carefully taken to pieces, and hung on small pegs on the board; the whole were surrounded with the main spring. In the other houses the remainder of the ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad

... the error of her birth, Skippy refused to take her seriously. There were boys even younger than he who wore girls' jewelry, who wrote and received what were called "mash notes," and who flaunted these sentimentalities openly. He knew such incomprehensible males did exist. There were three on his block and he had thrashed them all soundly and been thrashed for having thrashed them, which of course convinced him in his biblical estimate that women were created for the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... and over again—delicatessens, laundries, barber-shops, saloons, groceries, lunch-rooms. She ventured down a side-street, toward a furnace-glow of sunset. West End Avenue was imposing to her in its solid brick and graystone houses, and pavements milky in the waning light. Then came a block of expensive apartments. She was finding the city of golden rewards. Frivolous curtains hung at windows; in a huge apartment-house hall she glimpsed a negro attendant in a green uniform with a monkey-cap and close-set rows of brass buttons; she had a ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... was in the place where Jonas fashioned his brooms, in which case the chopping block, the bundles of twigs, as well as the broom-sticks would be lying about. Bideabout was not an orderly and tidy worker, and his material would almost certainly be dispersed and strewn in such a manner as to trip up and throw down anyone unaccustomed ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... have done it three times, or more than that, perhaps, but I casually mentioned in the smoking-room one night that some curious fool of a gardener boy had thrown some stones and frightened Strangeways, and that Pearson and I were watching for him, and that if I caught him I was going to knock his block off— bing! He didn't do it again. Darned fool! What does he ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... George, Death Battalions, [*] protesting.... [*See Notes and Explanations.] The Council of the Russian Republic was one chorus of disapproval. The entire machinery set up by the Russian Revolution of March functioned to block ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... street several "slices" of the brick block had been torn away and the lot cleared for the erection of some business building. Running across this open space with wild shrieks and spilling the milk from the big pitcher she carried—milk for the boarders' tea, Hi knew—came ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... upon them, was too quick, too clever; Dennison's attempt to block him off was only a glancing one that staggered him for the fraction of an instant; and the ball had no sooner struck in Collingwood's arms than Lawrence launched himself and hurled the ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... I am fully convinced if we ever make an industry out of this chestnut business it's going to have to be based on grafted trees of good varieties. I have one block of approximately 200 grafted trees of Meiling and Kuling. Those trees have a nice crop on this year. They have different age tops, but we have a nice crop of nuts on them. I have another block of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... citizens sat in the Public Assembly in the Pnyx to hear the orators. In the centre of the semicircular space the tribune stood, a square block of stone, [Greek: Bema], and from this the people ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... but a hatred; and this, in some cases, along with an extraordinary dry taste for practical punning. I remember it is related of Phalaris, the capricious tyrant of Sicily, that he once caused a poor fellow to be beheaded on a horse-block, for no other cause ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... professional landscape man can save you many dollars and much disappointment. I have seen so many sad results in cases of land development where too much confidence has been the stumbling-block on the road to success, that I feel justified in harping on the necessity of asking advice from those who ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue

... when an officer, perched in the shrouds, sighted a passage in the E.N.E. That direction was at once taken, but again it was found impossible to cut a passage, and when night came the crew had to make the ship fast to a huge block of ice. The loud cracking noises which had awoke the commander the night before now began with such violence that it really seemed impossible for the vessel to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... commenced in April, in the mountains above the coast-road connecting Nice and Genoa. Bonaparte's own army numbered 40,000 men; the force opposed to it consisted of 38,000 Austrians, under Beaulieu, and a smaller Sardinian army, so placed upon the Piedmontese Apennines as to block the passes from the coast-road into Piedmont, and to threaten the rear of the French if they advanced eastward against Genoa. The Piedmontese army drew its supplies from Turin, the Austrian from Mantua; to sever the two armies was to force them on to lines of retreat ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left. When she came in she said that she had been around the block, but she must have gone around it more than once, for ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... the sciences do, such partial and probably not wholly correct results as subsequent investigation can utilise even while it supplements and improves them. Most philosophies hitherto have been constructed all in one block, in such a way that, if they were not wholly correct, they were wholly incorrect, and could not be used as a basis for further investigations. It is chiefly owing to this fact that philosophy, unlike science, has hitherto been unprogressive, because each ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... was I, and he lies buried in Dunfermline Abbey, in my native town. When a boy, I used to walk often around the towering square monument on the Abbey—one word on each block in big stone letters 'King Robert the Bruce'—with all the fervor of a Catholic counting his beads. But Bruce was much more than a king, Your Majesty, he was the leader of his people. And not the first; Wallace the man of the people comes first. Your Majesty, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... Walters would declare, she does not perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does; she performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more merciful executioner. Nor does Georgiana sing to company in the parlor. That is Sylvia's gift; and upon the whole it was this unmitigated practice in the bosom—and in the ears—of her family that enabled Sylvia to shine with such vocal effulgence in the procession on the last ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... of course; only Gordon isn't in Egypt. And he would do no good in Egypt. The officials would block his way. It is only in the Soudan that he could have a free hand, be of real use. There, a man, a real man, like Gordon, could show the world how civilisation can be accepted by desert races, despite a crude and cruel religion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes were extended the granite block became the hub of a wheel of which the ropes were the spokes. A number of women and girls took ropes apiece and jerked them simultaneously, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... spoke up the Judge with a twinkle in his eyes. "Enid, you take her down the block to that restaurant and get her a good breakfast. She'll be ready for ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... rain came down, the wind driving it under the shed until Tom was hard put to find a place where the drops would not reach him. He withdrew into a far corner, taking his motor-cycle with him, and then, sitting on a block of wood, under the rough mangers where the horses were fed while the farmers attended church, the lad thought over the situation. He could make little of it, and the more he tried the worse it seemed to become. He looked out across the ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton

... approach an aspect of this question which concerns us still more closely, and will be best illustrated by an actual fact. A few years ago I was bathing in an Alpine stream, and returning to my clothes from the cascade which had been my shower-bath, I slipped upon a block of granite, the sharp crystals of which stamped themselves into my naked shin. The wound was an awkward one, but being in vigorous health at the time, I hoped for a speedy recovery. Dipping a clean pocket-handkerchief ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... squared piece of timber, reaching from the eye of the man to the walls of the building. This peculiar mode of treating the subject may be traced to the earliest picture-books—thus the Ars Memorandi, a block-book of the early part of the 15th century, represents this figure of speech by a piece of timber transfixing a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... and my poor wife very patient, and so to dinner, and in comes Mrs. Barbara Sheldon, now Mrs. Wood, and dined with us, she mighty fine, and lives, I perceive, mighty happily, which I am glad [of] for her sake, but hate her husband for a block-head in his choice. So away after dinner, leaving my wife and her, and by water to the Strand, and so to the King's playhouse, where two acts were almost done when I come in; and there I sat with my cloak about my face, and saw the remainder of "The Mayd's Tragedy;" a good play, and well acted, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... to this department," he presently continued, "is the room where the plates for the color section of the paper are prepared. After the drawing for the pictures is made, it is outlined on a block of metal and afterward cut out, so that the design remains in relief; then the impression is taken with colored inks, a separate printing being made for each color in turn, except where the colors are permitted to fuse before they dry in order to produce a secondary tone. You doubtless ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... flushed under her rouge, for there was something in Berselius's tone that made the simple words an insult. Before she could reply, however, the block in the traffic ceased, and as the carriage drove on Berselius bowed again to her coldly, and as though she were a stranger with whom he had spoken for a moment, and whom he had ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... in any very coarse dark marble. Greenstone is an excellent rock, and has a fine surface, but it is unmanageable. The grayer granites may often be used with good effect, as well as the coarse porphyries, when the gray is to be particularly warm. An outward surface of a loose block may be often turned to good account in turning an angle; as the colors which it has contracted by its natural exposure will remain on it without inducing damp. It is always to be remembered, that he who prefers neatness to beauty, and who would have sharp angles and ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... mounts the platform, takes his stand Before the fatal block, and kneels In preparation—but his hand A soft warm touch that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... dexterously performed this office, and taking Cuthbert by the arm, bid him muffle his face in the collar of his cloak, and walk cautiously and with circumspection. They quickly reached the great block of buildings of which the Houses of Parliament formed the most conspicuous feature; and diving down a narrow entry, Kay paused suddenly before a low-browed door, and gave the peculiar knock Cuthbert had learned from ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... least he lived ten miles off—-was much annoyed by tigers which, from the continuous nature of his large block of evergreen forest land, he could only get at by sitting over a bait. On one occasion he had tied out a bullock, in a piece of land of a few acres which he had cleared in the middle of the forest, and concealed himself on a tree. It was during the day, and the ground was covered ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... the next block now, skirting another stone wall with overhanging boughs. Mr. Chouteau said it was his mother's place, and he would have to insist upon our stopping to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... German penetration in Russia, which would thus be able to set her own affairs in order. The Czecho-Polish block would also frustrate the German plans of creating a Polish-German-Magyar combination by means of a small Poland, completely dependent on the Central Powers, or by means of the so-called Austro-Polish solution. The Czecho-Slovaks, owing to their geographic position and past traditions, and owing to ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... caucus recogntion; members serve four-year terms) and the Federal Council or Bundesrat (69 votes; state governments are directly represented by votes; each has three to six votes depending on population and are required to vote as a block) elections: Federal Assembly - last held 18 September 2005 (next to be held September 2009); note - there are no elections for the Bundesrat; composition is determined by the composition of the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... recognition. I could not have believed it possible, if it had been told of me, that, one minute affected by beautiful and sacred remembrances, the next I should be yielding to the unimpassioned tyranny of a woman who could never be anything but a stumbling-block and an evil influence. I had yet to learn that in times of mental and moral struggle the mixed fighting forces in us resolve themselves into two cohesive powers, and strive for mastery; that no past thought or act goes for nothing at such a time, but creeps ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... drawing his illustration from what he happened to see at the moment, "you might as well bid yon squirrel not to jump from bough to bough. It is our nature, and you cannot change a squirrel into an owl, or a man into a block. But," he continued, taking her hand, "I have not told thee all. I know not when I shall see thee again, for ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... top of the ladder was an opening to a large loft. Here there was more hay, and also some old farm implements which had evidently been hoisted there by means of a block and tackle. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the Croydon register gives her of "Queen of Hell"? (1788.) Distinguished people were buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which they were connected, and each sham burial service was entered in the parish registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian. This curious custom is very ancient. Thus we read in the Odyssey that when Menelaus heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he reared for him a cenotaph, and piled an empty barrow "that the fame of the dead man might never be quenched." Probably this old usage gave ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... bring with a noise, My merry, merry boys, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free And drink to your heart's desiring. With the last year's brand Light the new block, and For good success in his spending, On your psaltries play, That sweet luck may Come while ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... later Darby, with the fever still hot on him, was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream, and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road, in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours, and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning. Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened, and then went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... branch excel him in promptness. Within three months after the founding of Jamestown, a party of 120 colonists, led by the judge's kinsman George Popham, landed at the mouth of the Kennebec, and proceeded to build a rude village of some fifty cabins, with storehouse, chapel, and block-house. When they landed in August they doubtless shared Weymouth's opinion of the climate. These Englishmen had heard of warm countries like Italy and cold countries like Russia; harsh experience soon taught them that ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... to suffer such other atrocities as usually accompanied the death of a traitor in those days. The king, however, satisfied with his condemnation, spared him these indignities, and the duke was allowed to meet his death at the block. His corpse was reverently carried from the Tower to the Church of the Austin Friars by six ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... three or four branches of the family living in the neighbourhood, and well known as industrious and respectable members of the peasant class. When the earthquake comes, however, the cottage is as much imperiled as the palace; so the events which brought Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to the block, and sent panic into every court in Europe, also broke up and dispersed the humble house of Gostillon. In the awful confusion of the times, some were slain upon barricades; some sent hither and thither with the army, to perish in La Vendee or elsewhere; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... under cover of their trenches and made a lodgment in the ditch. These were followed by other parties with hooks to drag down the sand-bags and tools to overthrow the parapet. They were exposed to the fire of the block-houses in the village, and Major Green, the English officer who commanded the Star fort, had his detachment in readiness behind the parapet to receive the enemy ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... evident that the work through the Fifth Avenue section would be extremely slow, shafts were sunk in each street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The shafts, as shown on Plate XIV, were located in the streets, but in such a way as to block only half of the roadway. At the same time it was decided to construct in open cut about 200 ft. of the Three-Track Tunnel at the west end of the contract in 32d Street, where the rock surface was below the top of the tunnel. It was hoped that the remainder of the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason

... the repair of the heavens, prepared, at the Ta Huang Hills and Wu Ch'i cave, 36,501 blocks of rough stone, each twelve chang in height, and twenty-four chang square. Of these stones, the Empress Wo only used 36,500; so that one single block remained over and above, without being turned to any account. This was cast down the Ch'ing Keng peak. This stone, strange to say, after having undergone a process of refinement, attained a nature of efficiency, and could, by its innate powers, set itself ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... and we all laughed then, and Aunty May went up to the house to turn into a clean-faced grown-up again, and Aunty Edith unlocked the boat and handed the big umbrella to the man and told him to use the boat as often and as long as he liked. He put his paint-box and sketch-block in, and got in himself, and I stood looking at him, wishing he'd ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull

... through all its lengths and breadths, with puns and quips, and conceits, and jokes, and satires, and inlined with philosophic secrets that opened down "into the bottom of a tomb"—that opened into the Tower—that opened on the scaffold and the block.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... inches thick are stood on edge at intervals of eighteen inches and the patient walks over them, thus training several groups of muscles; the blocks are at first set in straight lines, then in curving patterns. An ordinary octavo book makes a good substitute for a block. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... me, said to be the one used by Lady Jane Grey when on the scaffold. Nothing makes me more conscious that I am on foreign soil than the constant recurrence of associations connected with the executioner's block. We hung the Quakers and we burned the witches, but we are careful not to remember the localities of our barbarisms; we show instead the Plymouth ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... will and it is subservient to base leadership, while its power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient, or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... soon as we are at work. So there will be no real danger of trouble from the Indians then. What we propose is this. We don't what to sell out, we think it is good enough to hold, but we want to get a company to find the money for getting up the machinery, building a strong block-house with a palisade, laying in stores, and working the place. Jerry, Tom, and I would of course be in command, at any rate for the first year or so, when the ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... respecting the ancient Knickerbockers. It seems, however, that while digging in the centre of the emperors garden, (which, you know, covers the whole island), some of the workmen unearthed a cubical and evidently chiseled block of granite, weighing several hundred pounds. It was in good preservation, having received, apparently, little injury from the convulsion which entombed it. On one of its surfaces was a marble slab with (only think of it!) an inscription—a legible inscription. Pundit ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... with plates of marble, each room a different colour, and the floors were of mosaic, with Persian carpets. The dining-hall was cased in alabaster, and the table and the cupboards were of cedar wood. The whole house looked like a block of solid marble, for it was covered with marble without as well as within, and must have cost immense sums. Every Saturday half-a-dozen servant girls, perched on ladders, washed down these splendid walls. These girls wore wide ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... General of the South African Republic said, that after the fight at Bakenlaagte the enemy proceeded against him with eighteen columns. Almost all the cattle in his District was taken. By the building of block houses the space on the High Veld was limited very much. The lines of block houses were only about three or four hours' ride from each other. He had to leave the High Veld to try to lead the enemy away, and proceeded to the Vryheid district. ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell

... once more, rattling the latch with all his might, but the bolt did not move. "I'll fetch a hatchet," he whispered; "we shall have to break open the door. You wait here and look out." He ran to the shed, where the axe lay by the block. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... people understand about clairvoyance; if this person could know how many doorways were in a large building only by groping along with his hands and thus acquiring the knowledge by touch, and another person who could see should glance along the block and instantly tell the blind man the correct number, that would be to the blind man a miracle. Now, when a clairvoyant sees things at a distance where the physical eye cannot reach he really does nothing more remarkable. When we see a thing we receive the vibrations caused by light. That gives ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers

... record we likewise learn, that the town was fortified to the sea by a flint wall, and that the fort, called the Block-house, had been then lately erected. The east-gate of this wall, in a line with the Block-house was actually standing last year, and has been since taken down to open a more convenient entrance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various

... in indistinct masses, which he had no difficulty in recognizing: the engine-house, the shops, the drying rooms, the storehouses, and when he reflected that within twenty-four hours there would remain of that imposing block of buildings, his fortune and his pride, naught save charred timbers and crumbling walls, he overflowed with pity for himself. He raised his glance thence once more to the horizon, and sent it traveling in a circuit around ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... am known, to marry her is to lose caste. I could live with her, and not incur much if any social opprobrium. Society would wink at the transgression, even if after she had become the mother of my children I should cast her off and send her and them to the auction block." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... after him, neighing wildly, but though she circled around him at full speed time after time, he would not pause, and when she attempted to block him he raised his head and pushed her away with the resistless urge of breast and shoulders. At that she attempted no more forceful persuasion but fell in behind him, still pausing from time to time to send her mournfully persuasive whinny after the obdurate leader until even the bays, usually ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room for her successor. This romance is one of extreme interest to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... induced to obey it? How is it to be made responsible? The third question, he says, is the only one seriously considered by Bentham; and Bentham's answer, we have seen, leads to that 'tyranny of the majority' which was Mill's great stumbling-block. Why, then, does Bentham omit the other questions? or rather, how would he answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer. People, in the first place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions. They don't rob that they may not go to prison. That is a sufficient ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... one more block, desperately tossed it out of the car. The balloon rose a hundred feet or so, and, aided by the cylinder, soon passed above the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... addresses were allowed to go. Ashe felt shaky and exhausted, but the hand of Mrs. Fenton was on his arm, and the need of sustaining her gave him strength. They got with some difficulty through the crowd and out of the court, and after walking a block or two were fortunate ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... walk to Wall Street Ferry each morning on my way to the office, and whenever the weather was suitable my wife accompanied me to within a block or ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... the shrine of the saint. Feeble as it was, however, the light was powerful enough to display in the centre a pile of scaffolding covered with black drapery. Standing at the foot, they could trace the outlines of a stage at the summit, fenced in with a railing, a block, and the other apparatus for the solemnity of a public execution, whilst the saw-dust below their feet ascertained the spot in which the heads ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... shone where the low wave gleamed over them. I had wondered at the profusion of marbles in the Italian churches, but I had not thought to find them wild on a lonely Sicilian beach. Once or twice already I had seen a block rosy in the torrent-beds, and it had seemed a rare sight; but here the whole shore was piled and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... in the ancient park Of my Lord Wynne, and he was now their mark For wit and gossip—quite the usual way, Where one bestows, and no one need repay. "A stumbling-block his pride; his heart's in strife Between two women, which to choose for wife. He's always hovering round that lovely girl, His lawyer's daughter, who will never furl Her flag of pride: she rivals ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard

... to do is to block out the spaces corresponding to those occupied by the model in the field of your vision. The method employed to do this is somewhat similar to that adopted by a surveyor in drawing the plan of a field. Assuming he had an ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... to enlist him in the cause of the Republic. If we reject his services, any petty military chieftain, by offering him freedom, can have them for the purpose of robbery and plunder. It is for the interests of the South, as well of the North, that the African should be permitted to offer his block for the temple of freedom. Sentiments unworthy of the man of the present day—worthy only of another Cain—could alone prevent such an offer ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... schedule prices," was the answer, after I had explained. "I haven't a single car, but I was saving Number Forty to haul in wheat, and if she doesn't strike a snow-block, and old Robertson's in the humor, she'll land you in Winnipeg before daylight to-morrow. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... set of timbers, and his task was nearly finished, while beside him waited a drill man and a swamper with the cumbersome, spiderlike mechanism ready to set. The carpenter gave a few more blows to a key block, and methodically flung his hammer into his box and hurried back out through the tunnel toward the cage, intent on resuming ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... desire to break every prohibition, must have a hard time keeping out of jail. No doubt it is with difficulty that they restrain themselves from climbing over the railway gates which are closed when the train comes in and which block the street for a few minutes several ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... that his neck was bare; and passed his hand over it smiling. Then he told the headsman that it was but a short one, and bade him be brave and strike straight, lest his good name should suffer. Then he laid himself down to the block, and put his neck on it; but he moved again before he gave the sign, and put his beard out in front—for he had ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... numerous tribes of the Ohio Indians came in and made their submission to the English. General Forbes having concluded treaties with the natives, left a garrison of provincials in the fort and built a block-house near Loyal Hannah, but, worn out with fatigue, he died before he could reach Philadelphia."[245] In the same month of July that Sir William Johnson dispossessed the French of Niagara, General Amherst took possession of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... they make use at night, when sleeping, is calculated to preserve the well-greased and plastered tresses in good order, being nothing more nor less than a curved piece of wood upon which the neck rests rather than the head and frightfully suggestive of an execution block. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... business of the company had grown to such dimensions that in 1908 plans for a new building were started. For purposes of air and light the vicinity of Independence Square was selected. Mr. Curtis purchased an entire city block facing the square, and the present huge but beautiful ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... detached it. Darkness within, yet beyond question there was a cavity there, not a solid wall; and with infinite care we removed another brick. Still the hole was too small to admit enough light from the dimly illuminated cell. With a chisel we pried at the sides of a large block of masonry, perhaps eight bricks in size. It moved, and we softly slid it from ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... commissary, I had plenty to do. There was a small wharf and an adobe custom-house in possession of the navy; also a barrack of two stories, occupied by some marines, commanded by Lieutenant Maddox; and on a hill to the west of the town had been built a two-story block-house of hewed logs occupied by a guard of sailors under command of Lieutenant Baldwin, United States Navy. Not a single modern wagon or cart was to be had in Monterey, nothing but the old Mexican cart with wooden wheels, drawn by two or three ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... theologian of the Church; but his doctrine, as will happen in such a case, does not in all points spring out of the nature of the religion itself. The Pauline theology is an attempt to reconcile the facts of Christianity and especially that great stumbling-block to the Jews, the death of the Messiah, with the requirements of Jewish thought. Instead of seeing in the death of Christ, as the older apostles at first did, a perplexing enigma, St. Paul saw in it the principal manifestation of the compassion of the Saviour, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... was born in Muscogee County, Georgia, April 1, 1846, the slave property of John Walker; after Walker's death, was sold on the auction-block in the city of Columbus, and bought by J. W. Thompson, after whose death he became the property of J. Haralson, of Selma, and so remained until emancipated in 1865; received no education until after he was free, when he instructed himself; was elected to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams



Words linked to "Block" :   machine, close, internal-combustion engine, suffocate, unstuff, stopple, dam up, back up, operate, put under, domino, anvil, housing, cylinder, breech closer, obstructor, bottleneck, asphyxiate, foreclose, prevent, form, slip, anesthetize, stopper, check, occlusion, hold, support, filibuster, artefact, accumulation, anesthetise, interference, withhold, idler pulley, computer science, vapor lock, anaesthetise, free, inking pad, cut off, cake, cinder block, stifle, obstruction, unfreeze, solid, idle wheel, emboss, foul, point jam, briquet, platform, pillow block, blanket jam, chock, clog, slab, inkpad, screen, put out, anaesthetize, nut, casting, aggregation, assemblage, metal bar, area, disrupt, goldbrick, step, choke, lug, interrupt, embargo, sustain, choke off, computer memory unit, reciprocating engine, hide, lodging, simple machine, piston chamber, keep back, idle pulley, cast, run, type, plug, spot jam, pad, congest, hospital ward, stonewall, country, living accommodations, inability, shape, briquette, preclude, nog, bollock, vapour lock, unblock, stay, sector, impedimenta, dam, barricado, impediment, forestall, shut off, computing, conceal, land up, crosshead, fence, ice, tie up, auction block, wedge, ingot, artifact, boss, stamp, fairlead, clog up, break up, close off, earth up, saddle block anaesthesia, forbid, barrage jam, obstructer, ward, collection, stamp pad, slip one's mind, hold up, hang, remember



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com