bar vs block

bar

noun
  • A cuboid piece of any solid commodity. 

  • An establishment offering cosmetic services. 

  • Premises or a counter serving any type of beverage. 

  • A solid metal object with uniform (round, square, hexagonal, octagonal or rectangular) cross-section; in the US its smallest dimension is ¹⁄₄ inch or greater, a piece of thinner material being called a strip. 

  • The space between the tusks and grinders in the upper jaw of a horse, in which the bit is placed. 

  • A ridge or succession of ridges of sand or other substance, especially a formation extending across the mouth of a river or harbor or off a beach, and which may obstruct navigation. (FM 55-501). 

  • The central divider between the inner and outer table of a backgammon board, where stones are placed if they are hit. 

  • A broad shaft, band, or stripe. 

  • The bar exam, the legal licensing exam. 

  • A drilling or tamping rod. 

  • A counter, or simply a cabinet, from which alcoholic drinks are served in a private house or a hotel room. 

  • An addition to a military medal, on account of a subsequent act. 

  • A dividing line (physical or notional) in the chamber of a legislature beyond which only members and officials may pass. 

  • A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length. 

  • A long, narrow drawn or printed rectangle, cuboid or cylinder, especially as used in a bar code or a bar chart. 

  • A similar sign indicating that the charge on a particle is the negative of its usual value (and that consequently the particle is in fact an antiparticle). 

  • A non-SI unit of pressure equal to 100,000 pascals, approximately equal to atmospheric pressure at sea level. 

  • The counter of such premises. 

  • The sign indicating that the characteristic of a logarithm is negative, conventionally placed above the digit(s) to show that it applies to the characteristic only and not to the mantissa. 

  • A metasyntactic variable representing an unspecified entity, often the second in a series, following foo. 

  • The crossbar. 

  • Any level of achievement regarded as a challenge to be overcome. 

  • A vertical line across a musical staff dividing written music into sections, typically of equal durational value. 

  • A linear shoaling landform feature within a body of water. 

  • An establishment where alcohol and sometimes other refreshments are served. 

  • Collectively, lawyers or the legal profession; specifically applied to barristers in some countries, but including all lawyers in others. 

  • One of the ordinaries in heraldry; a diminutive of a fess. 

  • Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨|⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ), formerly (obsolete) including oblique marks such as the slash. 

  • Anything that obstructs, hinders, or prevents; an obstruction; a barrier. 

  • The part of the crust of a horse's hoof which is bent inwards towards the frog at the heel on each side, and extends into the centre of the sole. 

  • A city gate, in some British place names. 

  • An informal establishment selling food to be consumed on the premises. 

  • A business selling alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises, or the premises themselves; a public house. 

  • One of those musical sections. 

  • A vein or dike crossing a lode. 

  • One of an array of bar-shaped symbols that display the level of something, such as wireless signal strength or battery life remaining. 

  • A gatehouse of a castle or fortified town. 

  • A horizontal pole that must be crossed in the high jump and pole vault. 

  • An official order or pronouncement that prohibits some activity. 

  • A measure of drugs, typically one ounce. 

  • The railing surrounding the part of a courtroom in which the judges, lawyers, defendants and witnesses stay. 

verb
  • To obstruct the passage of (someone or something). 

  • To imprint or paint with bars, to stripe. 

  • To prohibit. 

  • To lock or bolt with a bar. 

prep
  • Except, other than, besides. 

  • Denotes the minimum odds offered on other horses not mentioned by name. 

block

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

  • 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. 

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

  • 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 cellblock. 

  • The popping crease. 

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

  • A fixed-length group of bits making up part of a message. 

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

  • Solitary confinement. 

  • A section of split logs used as fuel. 

  • A blockhole. 

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

  • Something that prevents something from passing. 

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

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

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

  • 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). 

  • The perch on which a bird of prey is kept. 

  • A defensive play by one or more players meant to deflect a spiked ball back to the hitter’s court. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The human head. 

  • A shot played by holding the bat vertically in the path of the ball, so that it loses momentum and drops to the ground. 

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

  • Interference or obstruction of cognitive processes. 

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

  • A roughly cuboid building. 

  • A section of a railroad where the block system is used. 

verb
  • To hit with a block. 

  • To wait for some condition to become true. 

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

  • To prevent (something or someone) from passing. 

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

  • To play a block shot. 

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

  • To shape or sketch out roughly. 

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

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

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

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

How often have the words bar and block occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )