blockage

Etymology

block + -age

noun

1. (uncountable, countable) The state or condition of being blocked.
   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. 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 133
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, synonym of thromboembolism, or synonym of 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”).