Meaning

noun a solid piece of something (usually having flat rectangular sides)

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

noun a three-dimensional shape with six square or rectangular sides

originFrom Middle English blok (“log, stump, solid piece”), from Old French bloc (“log, block”), from Middle Dutch blok (“treetrunk”), from Old Dutch *blok (“log”), from Proto-West Germanic *blokk, from Proto-Germanic *blukką (“beam, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵ- (“thick plank, beam, pile, prop”). Cognate with Old Frisian blok, Old Saxon blok, Old High German bloh, bloc (“block”), Old English…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0