Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A traffic jam in which no vehicular movement is possible, especially one caused by the blockage of key intersections within a grid of streets.
- noun A complete lack of movement or progress resulting in a backup or stagnation.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A condition of total, interlocking
traffic congestion on thestreets orhighways of a crowded city, in which no one can move because everyone is in someone else's way. - noun On a smaller scale: the situation in which cars enter a
signal -controlledintersection too late during thegreen light cycle, and are unable to clear the intersection (due to congestion in the nextblock ) when the light turnsred , thus blocking the cross traffic when it's their turn to go. Repeated at enough intersections, this phenomenon can lead to citywide gridlock. - noun Figuratively and by extension, any
paralysis of a complex system due to severe congestion, conflict, ordeadlock .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a traffic jam so bad that no movement is possible
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"However, the short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook, in our view."
Stocks Gain As Fed Word On Stimulus Awaited By PAMELA SAMPSON 2010
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"Short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook," Bank of America analysts say in a report on the election.
Analysts Expect 'Massive Gridlock And Little Cooperation' After Election The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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Although the word "gridlock" is vintage New Yorkese, only Washington could take the word and give it an entirely different meaning, as in "political gridlock," which is what happens when little gets done.
John B. Townsend II: Gridlocked: Staring at Brake Lights and Holding First Place John B. Townsend II 2011
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"Short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook," Bank of America analysts say in a report on the election.
Analysts Expect 'Massive Gridlock And Little Cooperation' After Election The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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"Short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook," Bank of America analysts say in a report on the election.
Analysts Expect 'Massive Gridlock And Little Cooperation' After Election The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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Although the word "gridlock" is vintage New Yorkese, only Washington could take the word and give it an entirely different meaning, as in "political gridlock," which is what happens when little gets done.
John B. Townsend II: Gridlocked: Staring at Brake Lights and Holding First Place John B. Townsend II 2011
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However, the short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook, in our view.
Economists React: Just How Good Is Gridlock? Phil Izzo 2010
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"Short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook," Bank of America analysts say in a report on the election.
Analysts Expect 'Massive Gridlock And Little Cooperation' After Election The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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"Drivers will be frozen in their tracks whenever the President and other world leaders move about the city," said Samuel I. Schwartz, a traffic engineer and the coiner of the phrase "gridlock."
NYT > Home Page By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM 2011
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I have a question for you about what you refer to as gridlock in Congress, because it seemed to me that for the first time, Congress did say no to some very good programs because of the fact that they would add to the deficit and that this was, in fact, breaking a previous gridlock, which existed when Congress, when they had good programs, would simply say, well, we've got to add to the deficit.
Presidents Remarks In Q A Session In Boston On ITY National Archives 1993
bilby commented on the word gridlock
"America's "Futurama" is defunct. The famous walk-through diorama of a car-and-suburb world, imagineered by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors at the 1939 New York World's Fair, has weathered into a dreary emblem of our national backwardness. While GM bleeds to death on a Detroit street corner, the steel-and-concrete Interstate landscape built in the 1950s and 1960s is rapidly decaying into this century's equivalent of Victorian rubble.
As we wait in potholed gridlock for the next highway bridge to collapse, the French, the Japanese, and now the Spanish blissfully speed by us on their sci-fi trains. Within the next year or two, Spain's high-speed rail network will become the world's largest, with plans to cap construction in 2020 at an incredible 6,000 miles of fast track. Meanwhile China has launched its first 200 mile-per-hour prototype, and Saudi Arabia and Argentina are proceeding with the construction of their own state-of-the-art systems. Of the larger rich, industrial countries, only the United States has yet to build a single mile of what constitutes the new global standard of transportation."
- Mike Davis, 'Why Obama's Futurama Can Wait', 18 Nov 2008.
November 19, 2008