NEW: English for Tech Bundle → Save 40%
Speak Tech English
Your progress…

Loading your progress…

Sign in to save progress
Home
Standup vocabularynoun · /ˈblɒkər/

Blocker

Sign in to hear it
In simple English

A blocker stops your work. You cannot move forward until someone helps or a problem is fixed. In standup, say "I have a blocker" when you need help.

Heard "blocker" in a meeting? Here is what it means — in simple English.

At a glanceCEFR B1–B2
Commonness
Versatility
FormalityCasualFormalNeutral
Spoken ↔ WrittenSpokenWrittenSpoken
Directness ↔ DiplomaticDirectDiplomaticNeutral
Region

Say it like this

✓I'm blocked on this.
✓This is a blocker.
✓Any blockers? (the standard standup question)
✓We're blocked by the API team.

Real examples

Standup

"I'm blocked on the API review — can someone take a look today?"

Slack message

"This ticket is blocked until DevOps merges the config change."

GitHub PR

"Can't merge this PR — it's blocked on a design sign-off from the platform team."

Jira ticket

"Blocker: this ticket is waiting on a dependency from the payments team before we can continue."

Retrospective

"Our biggest blocker this sprint was the flaky staging environment — it held up the whole deployment."

Sprint planning

"Let's add this to the backlog as a known blocker before it becomes a fire drill next sprint."

Pair programming

"Actually, I think the real blocker here is that we don't have write access to that repo yet."

Don't say this

✕I have blocker.
✓I have a blocker.— "blocker" is countable, it needs "a"
✕I am blocker.
✓I'm blocked.— you use the adjective "blocked", not the noun
✕This task block me.
✓This task is blocking me.— needs "is" + the -ing form

Other forms

Verb

block

"Don't let one bug block the whole release."

Noun

blocker

"What's your blocker today?"

Adjective

blocked

"I'm blocked until QA replies."

Present participle

blocking

"This is blocking the whole team."

Often used with

major blockera blocker serious enough to hold up significant progress
technical blockercaused specifically by an engineering or infrastructure issue
dependency blockeryou're blocked because you're waiting on another team or service
remove / clear a blockerto resolve it — common in retros and standups
raise a blockerto flag it to the team so someone can act on it
identify a blockerto recognize and name what's actually stopping progress

Similar words

obstaclemore general — not specific to tech work
roadblocksame meaning as "blocker", slightly more casual and visual
issuebroader — doesn't necessarily mean progress has stopped
dependencytechnically the cause — you're blocked by a dependency, not blocked as one
waiting ona phrase describing the state, not a name for the thing itself
stuckinformal and personal — describes how you feel, not what's causing it

Opposites

unblockedresolvedcompletedready to mergegood to go

More words

UnblockETASpikeBacklogStandupSprintDevOpsAPIMergeDeploymentTicketDependency

Questions

Want more structured practice like this? Our English for Programmers course covers real workplace English in depth.

Sign in to mark this lesson complete and track it in your course progress.

Sign in

Sign in to collect badges as you complete lessons.

XLinkedIn
← Back to home