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Ahoy, mateys! Though it is now more often used by landlubbers, chockablock has a nautical history. On board a sailing vessel, chock can refer to a wedge or block that is pressed up against an object to keep it from moving (on land, wheel chocks prevent vehicles from rolling), while a block and tackle system combines pulleys, often in cases called "blocks," and rope or cable to provide mechanical advantage for hoisting and hauling. Using a block and tackle to hoist a sail on a traditional sailing ship, there’s a point when the rope or cable is pulled as far as it will go—the blocks at that point are tight together and said to be "chockablock"; they can no longer move, as if they are being checked by a chock. When non-nautical types associated the chock of chockablock with chock-full, from the Middle English adjective chokkefull, meaning "full to the limit" (likely a figurative use of "full to choking"), they gave chockablock the additional meaning "filled up." Chockablock can also be an adverb meaning "as close or as completely as possible," as in "dorms full of students living chockablock" or the seemingly redundant "chockablock full."
Examples of chockablock in a Sentence
Jennifer Weil, Footwear News, 11 Feb. 2026
Marty Supreme is chockablock with similarly specific delights, from a delivery truck for the Forward parked outside the paper’s old offices to an armadillo on sale at a pet store — perfectly legal back then!
—Adriane Quinlan, Curbed, 23 Dec. 2025
Functional sodas might be chockablock with mushroom adaptogens such as reishi and cordyceps, alongside traditional home anxiety remedies such as ashwagandha or L-theanine.
—Matthew Korfhage, Wired News, 6 Nov. 2025
The book by Leslie Bricusse is melodramatic, gory and sometimes awkwardly silly, but Frank Wildhorn’s pop-rock score is chockablock with great songs that showcase the talents of its actor-singers.
—Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Oct. 2025
The walls are chockablock with paintings of former presidents in heavily ornate gold frames.
—Kinsey Crowley, USA Today, 4 Aug. 2025
The battles are chockablock with clashing swords and explosions; more whimsical stuff, such as a house made of sheep wool and another constructed entirely of mushrooms, is relegated to background-joke status.
—David Sims, The Atlantic, 11 Apr. 2025
This was the chockablock 400-level section of the collection: the section for the Nigo-ologists and their Pharrell-ospher classmates.
—Jacob Gallagher, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2025
The idiosyncratic duplex penthouse is chockablock with treasures by a pantheon of 20th-century design titans on the order of Mario Bellini, Osvaldo Borsani, Angelo Mangiarotti, Gae Aulenti, Gio Ponti, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Joe Colombo, Tito Agnoli, and others.
—Mayer Rus, Architectural Digest, 21 Jan. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Chockablock.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chockablock. Accessed 29 Apr. 2026.
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