Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to interfere with, to stop someone’s actions or plans, to defeat, to overcome.

1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Scoffer who Fell Hard’ in Ade’s Fables 255: The Memorable Day when he (Pallzey) had put the Blocks to Old Man McLaughlin, since deceased.
1929		B. Duffy Rocky Road 121: I often wish he was married to Mrs. Healey below, instead—she’d soon put the box on the hackles.
1938		F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 246: Natural conditions bring about a state of congestion in which it is unnecessary for the pickpockets to ‘put the block on’ themselves.
1953		J. Thompson Savage Night (1991) 105: A punchy booze-stupe [...] could come along and put the blocks to you.
1958		F. Norman Bang To Rights 124: They only thing they did was put the block on him.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 19: He put the block on any of us having any more parties.
1963		B. Naughton Alfie I ii: I told Gilda from the start that I ain’t the marrying sort and [...] she never tries to put the block on me.
1970		‘Metropolitan Police Sl.’ in P. Laurie Scotland Yard (1972) 321: block, the: an embargo on information, imposed from above.
1989		in G. Tremlett Little Legs 121: The Old Bill were closing in, and they’d put the blockers on it.
2003		Guardian 10 Mar. 🌐 Mr Murdoch has put a block on any further acquisitions apart from its pending bid for US satellite broadcaster DirecTV.

1. to give someone a hard time.

1953		J. Thompson Criminal (1993) 83: I was putting the block to him.
1953		R. Prather ‘Double Take’ in Best of Manhunt (2019) [ebook] He’d be the perfect mark because he was always looking for the best of it. Where Elmlund had thought he was merely getting an amazing piece of good fortune, Strossmin might well think he was throwing the blocks to somebody else.
1986		C. Stroud Close Pursuit (1988) 52: He puts the blocks to Mantecado about which you don’t want to know.

2. (UK prison) to tighten up regulations that have become temporarily lax.

1950

P. Tempest Lag’s Lex. 19: blocks on, to put the. Tightening up of regulations against ‘fiddling’ or lax discipline.

see also under block n.¹