roadblock

English

Etymology

From road +‎ block.

Noun

roadblock (plural roadblocks)

1. Something that blocks or obstructs a road.
2. (figurative) An obstacle or impediment.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:hindrance

   to hit roadblocks

   • 2015 September 16, Andy Marra, “Many trans people still are denied healthcare because of their identity”, in The Guardian‎:

     Transgender people face roadblocks in accessing healthcare, and it’s not going away even after archaic rules denying healthcare access to transgender people are lifted and more of us become insured.

   • 2021 September 3, Anneken Tappe, “The August jobs numbers have economists worried. Here’s why”, in CNN‎:

     America’s jobs recovery hit a major roadblock in August as the Delta variant threatened the labor market recovery, and the US economy added far fewer jobs than expected.

   • 2023 March 15, Brian X. Chen, Nico Grant, Karen Weise, “How Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant Lost the A.I. Race”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Over the past decade, the products hit roadblocks. Siri ran into technological hurdles, including clunky code that took weeks to update with basic features, said John Burkey, a former Apple engineer who worked on the assistant.

Translations

Something that blocks or obstructs a road

Arabic: حَاجِز m (ḥājiz) South Levantine Arabic: حاجز m (ḥājez) Chinese: Mandarin: 路障 (zh) (lùzhàng) Czech: silniční zátaras m Dutch: wegversperring (nl) f, wegblokkade (nl) f Esperanto: baraĵo, barilo (eo) Finnish: tiesulku (fi), este (fi) French: barrage routier m German: Absperrung (de) f, Straßensperre (de) f Hebrew: מחסום (he) m (makhsóm) Italian: blocco stradale m Indonesian: pembatas jalan, sekatan jalan raya Japanese: 道路封鎖 (どうろふうさ, dōro fūsa) Malay: sekatan jalan raya (ms) Norwegian: Bokmål: veisperring (no) m or f, vegsperring m or f Nynorsk: vegsperring f Polish: blokada (pl) f Romanian: blocaj (ro) n Russian: блокпо́ст (ru) m (blokpóst), (доро́жное) загражде́ние (ru) n (zagraždénije) Spanish: barrera vial f, barricada viaria f, retén (es) m (Honduras) Swedish: vägspärr (sv) c Thai: please add this translation if you can Turkish: please add this translation if you can Vietnamese: rào chắn (vi)

An obstacle or impediment

Dutch: versperring (nl) f, obstakel (nl) n, tegenwerkende factor m Finnish: este (fi), hidaste (fi) German: Hindernis (de) n, Wegversperrung f Indonesian: rintangan (id), halangan (id) Malay: sekatan (ms), halangan (ms) Polish: przeszkoda (pl) f Russian: препя́тствие (ru) n (prepjátstvije), поме́ха (ru) f (poméxa), препо́на (ru) f (prepóna) Spanish: barrera (es) f

Verb

roadblock (third-person singular simple present roadblocks, present participle roadblocking, simple past and past participle roadblocked)

1. (colloquial, transitive) To prevent, hinder.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:hinder

Translations

to prevent, hinder

Finnish: estää (fi) Polish: blokować (pl) impf, zablokować (pl) pf, przeszkadzać (pl) impf, przeszkodzić (pl) pf, utrudniać (pl) impf, utrudnić (pl) pf