bottle definition

1. A hollow vessel, usually of glass or earthenware (but formerly of leather), with a narrow neck or mouth, for holding liquids.

2. The contents of a bottle; as much as a bottle contains; as, to drink a bottle of wine.

3. Intoxicating liquor; as, to drown one's reason in the bottle.

Bottle is much used adjectively, or as the first part of a compound. Bottle ale, bottled ale. Bottle brush, a cylindrical brush for cleansing the interior of bottles.

<marine biology> Bottle fish, a kind of deep-sea eel (Saccopharynx ampullaceus), remarkable for its baglike gullet, which enables it to swallow fishes two or three times its won size. Bottle flower.

<botany> An Australian tree (Sterculia rupestris), with a bottle-shaped, or greatly swollen, trunk. Feeding bottle, Nursing bottle, a bottle with a rubber nipple (generally with an intervening tubve), used in feeding infants.

Origin: OE. Bote, botelle, OF. Botel, bouteille, F. Bouteille, fr. LL. Buticula, dim. Of butis, buttis, butta, flask. Cf. Butt a cask.

(01 Mar 1998)