noun
- the isolating, closing off, or surrounding of a place, as a port, harbor, or city, by hostile ships or troops to prevent entrance or exit.
- any obstruction of passage or progress: We had difficulty in getting through the blockade of bodyguards.
- Pathology. interruption or inhibition of a normal physiological signal, as a nerve impulse or a heart muscle–contraction impulse.
verb (used with object), block·ad·ed, block·ad·ing.
- to subject to a blockade.
noun
- military the interdiction of a nation’s sea lines of communications, esp of an individual port by the use of sea power
- something that prevents access or progress
- med the inhibition of the effect of a hormone or a drug, a transport system, or the action of a nerve by a drug
verb (tr)
- to impose a blockade on
- to obstruct the way to
mid-17c., from block (v.) + -ade, false French ending (the French word is blocus, 18c. in this sense, which seems to be in part a back-formation from the verb bloquer and in part influenced by Middle Dutch blokhuus “blockhouse”).
late 17c., from blockade (n.). Related: Blockaded; blockading.
n.
- Intravenous injection of large amounts of colloidal dyes in which the reaction of the reticuloendothelial cells to other influences is temporarily prevented.
- Arrest of nerve impulse transmission at autonomic synaptic junctions, autonomic receptor sites, or myoneural junctions through the action of a drug.