Word.ws English Dictionary

soft-block

soft-block verb: to block (a user) on social media and then immediately unblock them, so that the user will (perhaps unknowingly) no longer follow or engage with the blocking user's posts.

Verb

soft-block (third-person singular simple present soft-blocks, present participle soft-blocking, simple past and past participle soft-blocked)

  1. (Internet, transitive) To block (a user) on social media and then immediately unblock them, so that the user will (perhaps unknowingly) no longer follow or engage with the blocking user's posts.
    • Softblocking is not a built-in function, but a strategy. There are a few ways of doing it, but the idea is to create a sort of inverted mute.2019 November 11, Brian Feldman, “How to Block, Mute, and Avoid Your Enemies Online”, in New York—Intelligencer

Noun

soft-block (plural soft-blocks)

  1. (Internet) The act of soft-blocking.
    • Where a mute hides someone else’s posts from you, a softblock hides your posts from someone else, without completely blocking them. It’s less like building a wall and more like cutting a string.2019 November 11, Brian Feldman, “How to Block, Mute, and Avoid Your Enemies Online”, in New York—Intelligencer
    • And just last week, I gave my partner the silent treatment for not answering me after five minutes. On social media, all I seem to do is hard-block people left and right, foregoing the soft-block altogether. If I’m not doing that, I leave rude comments with super sassy emojis or direct message my...2022 October 27, Paloma Torres, quoting Potentially Petty/Hot Person, “Advice Column: Am I becoming hotter or just pettier? Paloma Torres answers the age-old question constantly on everyone's minds”...

Forms of soft-block

Verb
third-person singular presentsoft-blocks
present participlesoft-blocking
past participlesoft-blocked
pastsoft-blocked
alternative formsoftblock
alternative formsoft block
Noun
pluralsoft-blocks

Questions about soft-block

What does soft-block mean?
Soft-block means to block (a user) on social media and then immediately unblock them, so that the user will (perhaps unknowingly) no longer follow or engage with the blocking user's posts.
What part of speech is soft-block?
Soft-block can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of soft-block?
The past tense of soft-block is soft-blocked.

Words near soft-block in the dictionary

  1. soft wheat
  2. soft wheats
  3. soft X-ray
  4. soft X-rays
  5. soft-billed
  6. soft-block
  7. soft-blocked
  8. soft-blocking
  9. soft-blocks
  10. soft-boiled
  11. soft-brick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soft-block (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “soft-block.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/soft-block. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.