A stoppage is an interruption or halt in something that was moving or flowing. When a soccer referee signals a stoppage in play, the game pauses temporarily because someone got hurt or the ball went out of bounds. When a factory experiences a work stoppage, machines stop running and production comes to a complete halt.

The word often appears in situations where continuous movement or activity matters. A heart doctor might worry about any stoppage in blood flow to the brain. A train stoppage delays passengers along the entire route. During a strike, workers create a deliberate work stoppage to show how important their labor is.

You can think of stoppage as the moment when smooth progress gets blocked. If your kitchen sink has a stoppage, water can't drain properly because something is clogging the pipe. The word captures both the act of stopping and the period of being stopped: “The stoppage lasted three hours before trains started running again.”

Stoppage differs from a pause, which suggests a brief, planned break. A stoppage often means something unexpected has blocked normal activity, and things can't continue until someone fixes the problem or removes the obstacle.