Meaning
Packed or crowded completely full, so tightly that nothing can move or be added. It can describe physical crowding, such as a street, a train, or a timetable, as well as quantities or arrangements taken to a maximum. Chiefly British and informal; North American English also uses the single-word form chockablock. Informal; standard in British and Commonwealth English, less common in North America. Regional use: British English.
Origin
A rigging term turned idiom. On a sailing ship, ropes ran through blocks (pulley shells); when a tackle was hauled as far as it would go, the two blocks jammed hard against each other, fully chock-a-block. The 'chock' element is usually traced to chock-full, earlier choke-full ('full to choking'), recorded by about 1400; the wedge sense of chock came later, so the phrase is not derived from wedging a block with a chock. The earliest known figurative use is Frederick Chamier's The Life of a Sailor (1832); the first plainly technical use found is Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840), which slightly puzzles etymologists, since the metaphor appears in print before the plain gear reference. Royal Museums Greenwich repeats the jammed-blocks explanation. British service slang later shortened it to chocka or chocker during the Second World War.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- choc-a-block
- chock-a-block full
- chocker
Usage Examples
- The high street was chock-a-block with shoppers on the last Saturday before Christmas.
- My diary is chock-a-block next week, so we had better meet the week after.
- Roads around the stadium were chock-a-block for an hour after the final whistle.