Un bloque de piedra es un fragmento de roca mayor que los cantos rodados pero que está suelto, de modo que puede ser movido por procesos mecánicos naturales como las corrientes de agua, los movimientos de tierra o la fuerza de la gravedad en las laderas suficientemente inclinadas. Al usar la palabra "bloque" no se hace distinción de forma o de clase de roca o mineral, aunque generalmente se trata de piezas angulosas y facetadas. Si bien, en general, los bloques pueden llegar a ser muy grandes, otras veces se hace referencia a "pequeños bloques", manejables por el ser humano, cuando se habla de fragmentos angulosos de piedra que no al haberse desgajado recientemente de la roca madre, aún mantienen aristas vivas. Para este tipo de material es preferible usar el vocablo clasto.

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In geology, a boulder is a rock fragment with size greater than 25.6 centimetres (10.1 in) in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles, depending on their "grain size". While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In common usage, a boulder is too large for a person to move. Smaller boulders are usually just called rocks or stones. The word boulder is short for boulder stone, from Middle English bulderston or Swedish bullersten. In places covered by ice sheets during Ice Ages, such as Scandinavia, northern North America, and Russia, glacial erratics are common. Erratics are boulders picked up by the ice sheet during its advance, and deposited during its retreat. They are called "erratic" because they typically are of a different rock type than the bedrock on which they are deposited. One of them is used as the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Some noted rock formations involve giant boulders exposed by erosion, such as the Devil's Marbles in Australia's Northern Territory, the Horeke basalts in New Zealand, where an entire valley contains only boulders, and The Baths on the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. Boulder sized clasts are found in some sedimentary rocks, such as coarse conglomerate and boulder clay. The climbing of large boulders is called bouldering.

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