What does bricklike mean?
Bricklike is an English adjective used to describe anything that resembles a brick, whether in form, colour, or physical character. Its most literal sense covers shape and appearance: a bricklike building, tablet, or package is roughly rectangular, blocky, and plain. More often the word is applied figuratively to density and hardness, especially of food — bread or cake that has gone stale may be described as bricklike — or to devices built as heavy, solid slabs. The connotation depends on context: describing a laptop as bricklike may suggest reassuring sturdiness, while applying it to a failed loaf implies something almost inedibly tough. The word is formed transparently from the noun brick plus the suffix -like, following the productive English pattern seen in childlike and lifelike. It appears mainly in informal and journalistic writing rather than technical prose, making it a vivid, instantly understood choice whenever solidity needs a shorthand.
adjectiveResembling a brick in shape, colour, texture, hardness, or weight. Often used to describe objects that are solid, heavy, and rectangular, or foods that are dense and hard.
- Shaped, coloured, or textured like a brick — rectangular, blocky, or reddish-brown.
- Dense, hard, and heavy in the manner of a brick; figuratively applied to food, machinery, or other objects that are stubbornly solid.
"The loaf had cooled into something bricklike, better suited for propping open a door than eating."
"The new phone was a bricklike slab of glass and aluminium."
"Left uncovered overnight, the cake turned disappointingly bricklike."
When your homemade bread comes out of the oven hard enough to double as a doorstop, English has exactly the word for it: bricklike.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of bricklike
Bricklike is formed within English by combining the noun "brick" with the adjectival suffix "-like," on the model of established compounds such as "childlike" and "lifelike." The noun "brick" itself entered Middle English from Old French, ultimately traceable to Germanic roots also reflected in Middle Dutch forms such as "bricke." The compound follows a highly productive pattern of -like formations that became especially common in modern English, so its emergence is best described as recent relative to the ancient history of its root noun.
Related word forms
How bricklike is actually used
An informal-to-neutral descriptive compound common in everyday speech and product reviews. It is frequently used figuratively and often carries a mildly negative connotation when describing food that is unpleasantly dense, though it can be neutral or even positive when praising sturdiness.
Easily confused with bricklike
"Brickle" is an archaic or dialectal adjective meaning brittle and fragile, whereas "bricklike" describes the opposite: the dense, solid character of a brick.