Block vs. Brick — What's the Difference?

A solid piece of a hard substance, such as wood, having one or more flat sides.

A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term brick denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured construction blocks.

Such a piece used as a construction member or as a support.

A small rectangular block typically made of fired or sun-dried clay, used in building.

Such a piece upon which chopping or cutting is done

A large and relatively heavy mobile phone, typically an early model with limited functionality

Such a piece upon which persons are beheaded.

A generous, helpful, and reliable person

One of a set of small wooden or plastic pieces, such as a cube, bar, or cylinder, used as a building toy.

Block or enclose with a wall of bricks

(Printing) A large amount of text.

Throw bricks at

(Sports) A starting block.

Cause (a smartphone or other electronic device) to become completely unable to function, typically on a permanent basis

A stand from which articles are displayed and sold at an auction

Be extremely worried or nervous.

A mold or form on which an item is shaped or displayed

A molded rectangular block of clay baked by the sun or in a kiln until hard and used as a building and paving material.

A substance, such as wood or stone, that has been prepared for engraving.

Such blocks of clay used as a building material

A pulley or a system of pulleys set in a casing.

An object shaped like such a block

An engine block.

(Informal) A smartphone, tablet, or similar electronic device that connects to the internet that has become inoperable.

A bloc.

A dark brownish red.

A set of like items, such as shares of stock, sold or handled as a unit.

(Informal) A helpful, reliable person.

A group of four or more unseparated postage stamps forming a rectangle.

(Basketball) A shot that falls short of the basket.

(Canadian) A group of townships in an unsurveyed area.

To construct, line, or pave with bricks.

A usually rectangular section of a city or town bounded on each side by consecutive streets.

To close or wall with brick

A segment of a street bounded by consecutive cross streets and including its buildings and inhabitants.

(Informal) To cause to become inoperable. Used especially of electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets, that connect to the internet. I bricked my smartphone when I tried to untether it.

A large building divided into separate units, such as apartments.

(Informal) To become inoperable. Used especially of electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets, that connect to the internet.

A length of railroad track controlled by signals.

(countable) A hardened rectangular block of mud, clay etc., used for building.

Something that obstructs; an obstacle

(uncountable) Such hardened mud, clay, etc. considered collectively, as a building material.

(Sports) An act of bodily obstruction, as of a player or the ball.

(countable) Something shaped like a brick.

(Football) An act of legally using one's body to obstruct or move a defensive player so that a player in possession of the ball may advance downfield, pass, or otherwise execute an offensive play.

A helpful and reliable person.

(Medicine) Interruption or obstruction of a physiological function

A shot which misses, particularly one which bounces directly out of the basket because of a too-flat trajectory, as if the ball were a heavier object.

(Psychology) A sudden cessation of speech or a thought process without an immediate observable cause, sometimes considered a consequence of repression. Also called mental block.

(informal) A power brick; an external power supply consisting of a small box with an integral male power plug and an attached electric cord terminating in another power plug.

(Slang) The human head

An electronic device, especially a heavy box-shaped one, that has become non-functional or obsolete.

To stop or impede the passage of or movement through; obstruct

A projectile.

To prevent from happening, succeeding, or progressing

(firearms) A carton of 500 rimfire cartridges, which forms the approximate size and shape of a brick.

To shut out from view

(poker slang) A community card (usually the turn or the river) which does not improve a player's hand.

To stop the passage of (a motion or bill) in a legislative assembly.

The colour brick red.

(Sports) To prevent or slow the movement of (an opponent) by using one's body, as by making a block in football.

(slang) A kilogram of cocaine.

(Sports) To stop or deflect (a ball or puck) by using one's body.

Extremely cold.

(Medicine) To interrupt or obstruct the functioning of (a physiological process), especially by the use of drugs.

(transitive) To build, line, or form with bricks.

(Psychology) To fail to remember.

(transitive) To make into bricks.

To support, strengthen, or retain in place by means of a block.

To hit someone or something with a brick.

To shape, mold, or form with or on a block

To make an electronic device nonfunctional and usually beyond repair, essentially making it no more useful than a brick.

To indicate broadly without great detail; sketch. Often used with out

To blunder; to screw up.

To run (trains) on a block system.

A block or clay tempered with water, sand, etc., molded into a regular form, usually rectangular, and sun-dried, or burnt in a kiln, or in a heap or stack called a clamp.

To obstruct the movement of an opponent by using one's body.

Bricks, collectively, as designating that kind of material; as, a load of brick; a thousand of brick.

To stop or deflect a ball or puck by using one's body.

Any oblong rectangular mass; as, a brick of maple sugar; a penny brick (of bread).

To suffer a mental block. Often used with on

A good fellow; a merry person; as, you 're a brick.

A substantial, often approximately cuboid, piece of any substance.

To lay or pave with bricks; to surround, line, or construct with bricks.

A chopping block: a cuboid base for cutting or beheading.

To imitate or counterfeit a brick wall on, as by smearing plaster with red ocher, making the joints with an edge tool, and pointing them.

A wig block: a simplified head model upon which wigs are worn.

Rectangular block of clay baked by the sun or in a kiln; used as a building or paving material

A mould on which hats, bonnets, etc., are shaped.

A good fellow; helpful and trustworthy

A piece of hard wood on which a stereotype or electrotype plate is mounted.

A case or frame housing one or more sheaves (pulleys), used with ropes to increase or redirect force, for example as part of lifting gear or a sailing ship's rigging. See also block and tackle.

A section of split logs used as fuel.

A set of sheets (of paper) joined together at one end, forming a cuboid shape.

(falconry) The perch on which a bird of prey is kept.

A physical area or extent of something, often rectangular or approximately rectangular.

(philately) A joined group of four (or in some cases nine) postage stamps, forming a roughly square shape.

(viticulture) A discrete group of vines in a vineyard, often distinguished from others by variety, clone, canopy training method, irrigation infrastructure, or some combination thereof.

A logical extent or region; a grouping or apportionment of like things treated together as a unit.

(computing) A logical data storage unit containing one or more physical sectors (see cluster).

(programming) A region of code in a program that acts as a single unit, such as a function or loop.

(cryptography) A fixed-length group of bits making up part of a message.

(chemistry) A portion of a macromolecule, comprising many units, that has at least one feature not present in adjacent portions.

(rail) A section of a railroad where the block system is used.

(computing) A contiguous range of Unicode code points used to encode characters of a specific type; can be of any size evenly divisible by 16, up to 65,536 (a full plane).

A contiguous group of urban lots of property, typically several acres in extent, not crossed by public streets.

The distance from one street to another in a city or suburb that is built (approximately) to a grid pattern.

A roughly cuboid building.

A cellblock.

Something that prevents something from passing.

Interference or obstruction of cognitive processes.

(sports) An action to interfere with the movement of an opposing player or of the object of play (ball, puck).

A temporary or permanent ban that prevents access to an online account or service, or connection to or from a designated telephone number, IP address, or similar.

(slang) The human head.

(UK) Solitary confinement.

(obsolete) A blockhead; a stupid fellow; a dolt.

(transitive) To fill or obstruct (something) so that it is not possible to pass.

(transitive) To prevent (something or someone) from passing.

(transitive) To prevent (something from happening or someone from doing something).

To impede (an opponent or opponent's play).

To specify the positions and movements of the actors for (a section of a play or film).

To hit with a block.

To play a block shot.

(transitive) To bar (someone undesirable) from connecting via telephone, instant messaging, etc., or from accessing an online account or service, or similar.

(transitive) To bar (a message or communication), or bar connection with (an online account or service, a designated telephone number, IP address, etc.).

To wait for some condition to become true.

(transitive) To stretch or mould (a knitted item, a hat, etc.) into the desired shape.

(transitive) To shape or sketch out roughly.

To knock (a person's hat) down over their eyes.

A piece of wood more or less bulky; a solid mass of wood, stone, etc., usually with one or more plane, or approximately plane, faces; as, a block on which a butcher chops his meat; a block by which to mount a horse; children's playing blocks, etc.

The solid piece of wood on which condemned persons lay their necks when they are beheaded.

The wooden mold on which hats, bonnets, etc., are shaped.

A large or long building divided into separate houses or shops, or a number of houses or shops built in contact with each other so as to form one building; a row of houses or shops.

A square, or portion of a city inclosed by streets, whether occupied by buildings or not.

A grooved pulley or sheave incased in a frame or shell which is provided with a hook, eye, or strap, by which it may be attached to an object. It is used to change the direction of motion, as in raising a heavy object that can not be conveniently reached, and also, when two or more such sheaves are compounded, to change the rate of motion, or to exert increased force; - used especially in the rigging of ships, and in tackles.

The perch on which a bird of prey is kept.

Any obstruction, or cause of obstruction; a stop; a hindrance; an obstacle; - also called blockage; as, a block in the way; a block in an artery; a block in a nerve; a block in a biochemical pathway.

A piece of box or other wood for engravers' work.

A piece of hard wood (as mahogany or cherry) on which a stereotype or electrotype plate is mounted to make it type high.

A blockhead; a stupid fellow; a dolt.

A section of a railroad where the block system is used. See Block system, below.

In Australia, one of the large lots into which public land, when opened to settlers, is divided by the government surveyors.

The position of a player or bat when guarding the wicket.

A number of individual items sold as a unit; as, a block of airline ticketes; a block of hotel rooms; a block of stock.

The length of one side of a city block{5}, traversed along any side; as, to walk three blocks ahead and turn left at the corner.

A halt in a mental process, especially one due to stress, memory lapse, confusion, etc.; as, a writer's block; to have a block in remembering a name.

A quantity of binary-encoded information transferred, or stored, as a unit to, from, or on a data storage device; as, to divide a disk into 512-byte blocks.

A number of locations in a random-access memory allocated to storage of specific data; as, to allocate a block of 1024 bytes for the stack.

To obstruct so as to prevent passage or progress; to prevent passage from, through, or into, by obstructing the way; - used both of persons and things; - often followed by up; as, to block up a road or harbor; to block an entrance.

To secure or support by means of blocks; to secure, as two boards at their angles of intersection, by pieces of wood glued to each.

To shape on, or stamp with, a block; as, to block a hat.

To cause (any activity) to halt by creating an obstruction; as, to block a nerve impulse; to block a biochemical reaction with a drug.

A solid piece of something (usually having flat rectangular sides);

A rectangular area in a city surrounded by streets and usually containing several buildings;

A three-dimensional shape with six square or rectangular sides

A number or quantity of related things dealt with as a unit;

Housing in a large building that is divided into separate units;

(computer science) a sector or group of sectors that function as the smallest data unit permitted;

An inability to remember or think of something you normally can do; often caused by emotional tension;

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

A metal casting containing the cylinders and cooling ducts of an engine;

An obstruction in a pipe or tube;

A platform from which an auctioneer sells;

(American football) the act of obstructing someone's path with your body;

Render unsuitable for passage;

Hinder or prevent the progress or accomplishment of;

Stop from happening or developing;

Interfere with or prevent the reception of signals;

Run on a block system;

Interrupt the normal function of by means of anesthesia;

Shut out from view or get in the way so as to hide from sight;

Stamp or emboss a title or design on a book with a block;

Obstruct;

Block passage through;

Support, secure, or raise with a block;

Impede the movement of (an opponent or a ball);

Be unable to remember;

Shape by using a block;

Shape into a block or blocks;

Prohibit the conversion or use of (assets);