a. [f. BLOCK sb. + -ISH.]
1. Of the nature of a block.
1565. Calfhill, Answ. Treat. Crosse (1846), 20. The blockish Images, the dead Crosses.
1869. Lowell, Cathedral, Poet. Wks. (1879), 446. Fear, That makes a fetish and misnames it God (Blockish or metaphysic, matters not).
2. Like a senseless block in the want of apprehension; excessively dull, stupid, obtuse.
a. of persons.
1548. Udall, etc., Erasm. Par. Luke iii. 7. The grosse and blockishe ignoraunte multitude.
1587. Golding, De Mornay, ix. 136. With the allowance euen of the blockishest.
1680. Hickeringill, Meroz, 38. To Gull the Blockish English.
1756. Wesley, Wks. (1872), X. 489. We see … dull, heavy, blockish Ministers.
1868. Nettleship, Browning, i. 23. While the other seems morose and blockish, this man is kindly.
b. of personal qualities, productions, etc.
a. 1555. Ridley, Wks., 225. I will make it evident how blockish and gross your answer is.
1670. Milton, Hist. Eng., IV. Wks. (1851), 172. Left only to obscure and blockish Chronicles.
1741. Oldys, Eng. Stage, v. 63. Blockish Stupidity, as in Rusticks.
1835. Browning, Paracels., 101. Whose innate blockish dullness.
3. Blocklike in form; roughly blocked out, rude, clumsy.
1880. Swinburne, Stud. Shaks., ii. (ed. 2), 100. Such a blockish model as this.
1880. Grant White, Every-Day Eng., 295. Our speech would be clumsy, the forms of our thought blockish.
