blockade








noun

  1. 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.
  2. any obstruction of passage or progress: We had difficulty in getting through the blockade of bodyguards.
  3. 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.

  1. to subject to a blockade.

noun

  1. military the interdiction of a nation’s sea lines of communications, esp of an individual port by the use of sea power
  2. something that prevents access or progress
  3. 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)

  1. to impose a blockade on
  2. to obstruct the way to
n.

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”).

v.

late 17c., from blockade (n.). Related: Blockaded; blockading.

n.

  1. Intravenous injection of large amounts of colloidal dyes in which the reaction of the reticuloendothelial cells to other influences is temporarily prevented.
  2. Arrest of nerve impulse transmission at autonomic synaptic junctions, autonomic receptor sites, or myoneural junctions through the action of a drug.
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