bottle
/ˈbɒt(ə)l
/noun
1A glass or plastic container with a narrow neck, used for storing drinks or other liquids: he opened the bottle of beer...
- Do not store poisons in drink bottles, glasses, or jars.
- Fans inside the Arena had started pelting each other with plastic beer glasses and bottles, and the concert was temporarily halted.
- She did as she was told and trotted off into the kitchen and she looked around for a glass bottle containing a colorless liquid.
Synonyms
container;
flask, carafe, decanter, pitcher, flagon, carboy, demijohn
1.1The contents of a bottle: she managed to get through a bottle of wine...
- For example, the alcoholic content of a bottle of wine must be indicated and also its origin and where the wine was bottled.
- You can check this by sampling a bottle of Bollinger's Vieilles Vignes (ungrafted old vines) against a bottle made from their grafted vines.
- It being the longest day of the year, I suppose I should have been celebrating some arcane shamanic ritual, but I just put my foot up and finished the remains of a bottle of schnapps.
1.2 (the bottle) informal Used in reference to the heavy drinking of alcohol: more women are taking to the bottle...
- As a result, the villagers turn to the bottle, drinking to forget how dreary their lives are.
- Reading the Government's plans to liberalise the licensing laws could be enough to make anybody turn to the bottle.
- The minimum age of boys taking to the bottle in The State has fallen to as low as 13.5 years.
1.3A bottle fitted with a teat for giving milk or other drinks to babies and very young children.Sadly, Andre seems to be sick and won't even drink milk from a bottle....
- Her theory is that the patient must wear diapers, suck his thumb and drink from a baby bottle to be cured.
- They will generally signal an interest in solid foods by biting the bottle nipple or showing an interest in licking milk or formula from a finger.
1.4A large metal cylinder holding liquefied gas.We were in a metal box with gas bottles, connected to an electrical hook-up point.
2 [mass noun] British informal The courage or confidence needed to do something difficult or dangerous: I lost my bottle completely and ran...
- But these figures do seem to seriously undermine the slur that the Spaniards lost their bottle after the bombs.
- So he lost his bottle in the end, and postponed the general election before he had even called it.
- We started slowly, but we wore them down and they lost their bottle when we were 8-3 up.
Synonyms
courage, courageousness, bravery, valour, intrepidity, boldness, nerve, confidence, daring, audacity, pluck, pluckiness, spirit, mettle, spine, backbone, steel, fibre, stout-heartedness
informal guts, gutsiness, spunk, grit, gumption, gameness
British informal ballsiness
North American informal moxie, cojones, sand
vulgar slang balls
rare temerariousness, venturousness
verb [with object]
1Place (drinks or other liquid) in bottles for storage: the wine was bottled in 1997...
- Even today many no longer drink tap water; bottled mineral water is the fashion.
- Children who drink bottled water may be putting their teeth at risk because they are missing out on fluoride in their tap water, researchers claim.
- Only children living in nonfluoridated areas or children who drink only nonfluoridated bottled water should receive supplements.
1.1British Place (fruit or vegetables) in glass jars with other ingredients in order to preserve them: Angela bottled fruit and jam and chutneys...
- Recipes for bottling vegetables and making chutneys bring on the Little House on the Prairie spirit.
- His love of life was bubbly and his chirpy, outgoing personality was the very stuff that needs to be bottled and preserved in today's trying world.
- They are sometimes preserved by bottling but lose much of their evanescent flavour.
1.2 (usually as adjective bottled) Store (gas) in a container in liquefied form: she set about connecting the bottled gas to the stove...
- The company is run from premises on Tennyson Street, where the gas is bottled and distributed.
- So, the Leader of the Opposition, V.S. Achutanandan, may have hit the nail on the head when he said that we might even see air being bottled and sold eventually.
- With holds up to 35 feet off the deck, Iowa residents may want to consider bottled oxygen.
2 informal Throw a glass bottle at (someone): he was bottled offstage at a club...
- The teenager was assaulted at Southend Victoria Station at around 8pm by a gang of male yobs who bottled him in the hand with a smashed glass.
- But, seriously, there are some huge questions that need to be addressed here - claims of police over-reaction, stewards bottling customers, fears of explosions.
- The 37-year-old was unable to work after the first assault in July 2003 in which he was bottled, repeatedly kicked and left for dead in the town centre.
3British informal Lose one’s nerve and decide not to do (something): the leader had completely bottled his confrontation with them one terrified contestant bottles it and scarpers...
- He accused him of bottling a referendum for the same reason that he decided against an early election: because he knows he would lose.
- The coach maintained after the game that some of his players had "bottled it" when it came to taking penalties.
- I completely froze when I was handed the microphone and very nearly bottled it, but I managed to get the words out.
Phrases
bottle and glass
be full bottle on
hit the bottle
in bottle
Phrasal verbs
bottle out
bottle something up
bottle someone/thing up
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French boteille, from medieval Latin butticula, diminutive of late Latin buttis 'cask, wineskin' (see butt4).
The word bottle goes back to Latin buttis ‘cask, wineskin’, the origin of butt (Late Middle English) and also of butler (Middle English) originally the man in charge of the wine-cellar. To have a lot of bottle and the related phrases to lose your bottle and to bottle out, meaning ‘to lose your nerve’, date back to the 1950s. ‘Bottle’ here may be from rhyming slang bottle and glass, ‘arse’.