bottle

Alternative forms

• botl (Jamaican English)

Noun

bottle (plural bottles)

1. A container, typically made of glass or plastic and having a tapered neck, used primarily for holding liquids.
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 6, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he’d never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.

   Beer is often sold in bottles.

2. The contents of such a container.

   I only drank a bottle of beer.

3. A container with a rubber nipple used for giving liquids to infants, a baby bottle.

   The baby wants a bottle.

4. (Britain, informal) Nerve, courage.

   You don’t have the bottle to do that!   He was going to ask her out, but he lost his bottle when he saw her.

5. (attributive, of a person with a particular hair color) With one’s hair color produced by dyeing.

   Did you know he’s a bottle brunette? His natural hair color is strawberry blonde.

6. (obsolete) A bundle, especially of hay; something tied in a bundle.
   • End of the 14th century, The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Manciple’s Prologue and Tale

     Is that a Cook of London, with mischance? / Do him come forth, he knoweth his penance; / For he shall tell a tale, by my fay, / Although it be not worth a bottle hay.

   • 1599, Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare, Act 1 Scene 1

     Don Pedro. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument.

     Benedick. If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam.

   • 1590s, Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe

     I was no sooner in the middle of the pond, but my horse vanished away, and I sat upon a bottle of hay, never so near drowning in my life.

7. (figuratively) Intoxicating liquor; alcohol.

   to drown one’s troubles in the bottle

   Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car” (song): See, my old man’s got a problem. He live^[sic] with the bottle; that’s the way it is.

Verb

bottle (third-person singular simple present bottles, present participle bottling, simple past and past participle bottled)

1. (transitive) To seal (a liquid) into a bottle for later consumption. Also fig.

   This plant bottles vast quantities of spring water every day.

   • 2014 May 11, Ivan Hewett, “Piano Man: a Life of John Ogdon by Charles Beauclerk, review: A new biography of the great British pianist whose own genius destroyed him [print version: A colossus off-key, 10 May 2014, p. R27]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎:

     The temptation is to regard him [John Ogdon] as an idiot savant, a big talent bottled inside a recalcitrant body and accompanied by a personality that seems not just unremarkable, but almost entirely blank.

2. (transitive, Britain) To feed (an infant) baby formula.

   Because of complications she can't breast feed her baby and so she bottles him.

3. (Britain, slang) To refrain from doing (something) at the last moment because of a sudden loss of courage.

   The rider bottled the big jump.

4. (Britain, slang) To strike (someone) with a bottle.

   He was bottled at a nightclub and had to have facial surgery.

5. (Britain, slang) To pelt (a musical act on stage, etc.) with bottles as a sign of disapproval.

   Meat Loaf was once bottled at Reading Festival.

References

• “bottle” (US) / “bottle” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press. (premium)

Noun

bottle (plural bottles)

1. (Britain, dialectal or obsolete) A dwelling; habitation.
2. (Britain, dialectal) A building; house.