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I have a scenario wherein I need to tell my friend that my nose is blocked. I am bit skeptical about the usage of above sentence. Could someone tell me in the above context, of the below two sentence which is more accurate and recommended.

  1. My nose is blocked.
  2. My nose has blocked.

3 Answers 3

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The verb "to block" is transitive.  It expects a semantic patient.  In the active voice, that patient is supplied by a direct object

 

Congestion blocks my nose. 

Here, the subject "congestion" represents the semantic agent, the verb "blocks" represents the action in the active voice, present tense and indefinite aspect, and the direct object "my nose" represents the semantic patient. 

 

Congestion has blocked my nose. 

Here, the verb is still in the active voice, "congestion" is still the agent, and "my nose" is still the patient.  This form of the verb is a perfect aspect form. 

 

My nose is blocked. 

Here, the verb is in the passive voice.  There is no agent in the sentence, and no agent is required.  The subject represents the patient. 

 

* My nose has blocked.

Here, we have a problem.  The transitive verb is in the active voice, but the required patient is missing.  We know what does the blocking, but we don't know what gets blocked.  Perhaps my nose is large enough to block your view, or to block your way.  This sentence might make sense in a different context, but it does not mean what you want to say. 

 

My nose has been blocked. 

Here, we have a solution.  This form of the verb is in both the passive voice and the perfect aspect.  The subject "my nose" is once again the patient, as it should be in this context. 

Unlike "my nose is blocked", "my nose has been blocked" makes sense with durations.  It expresses a state that exists for some time.  My nose has been blocked for several hours.  My nose has been blocked since last week.  My nose has been blocked before, and I'm sure it will be blocked again. 

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"My nose has blocked." sounds unnatural or even a little bit weird to me.

Normally i would say "My nose is blocked." That would be the more accurate and recommended one.

or perhaps "I am having a blocked nose."

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My nose is blocked = You are talking about current situation. This is simple present tense. That's up to you to choose this tense.

My nose has blocked = In your mind, you consider a relatively short amount of time of this situation that you have been with. That is, this isn't new. maybe you have had it since morning or 2 days. You mean it started in the past, and now, the result is a blocked nose.

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