Word.ws English Dictionary

bottle it

bottle it verb: to suppress an action or expression, especially when due to lack of courage.

Verb

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

  1. (Cockney, UK, informal, slang) To suppress an action or expression, especially when due to lack of courage.
  2. (Cockney, UK, informal, slang) To lose one's nerve.
  3. (Cockney, UK, informal, slang) To run away, especially when due to lack of courage.
  4. (Cockney, UK, especially, informal, slang) To fail in an embarrassing way in a crucial situation, especially due to nerves.
    • For a while, it was a three-horse race and, if anything, it looked like José Mourinho's Chelsea were the team to beat. Chelsea bottled it, Liverpool beat Manchester City and the title was theirs to lose ... which they did in that match against Chelsea.2022 October 6, James Richardson, The Totally Football Book, Hachette UK, →ISBN
    • If you want to win Wimbledon, you have to be controlled mentally, but he's too volatile. He's just not a level-headed guy out there. He's had many chances and he's always bottled it.2024 June 20, Katherine Reilly, Match Point: an enemies to lovers tennis romance perfect for fans of Wimbledon, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN

Forms of bottle it

third-person singular presentbottles it
present participlebottling it
past participlebottled it
pastbottled it

Origin of bottle it

From Cockney rhyming slang bottle and glass, originally meaning arse. lose one's nerve was vulgarly lose one's arse, euphemised to lose one's bottle, clipped to bottle and subsequently given a dummy pronoun. See bottle.

Questions about bottle it

What does bottle it mean?
Bottle it means to suppress an action or expression, especially when due to lack of courage.
What part of speech is bottle it?
Bottle it is a verb.
What is the past tense of bottle it?
The past tense of bottle it is bottled it.

Words near bottle it in the dictionary

  1. bottle holders
  2. bottle house
  3. bottle houses
  4. bottle imp
  5. bottle imps
  6. bottle it
  7. bottle jack
  8. bottle jacks
  9. bottle jaw
  10. bottle jaws
  11. bottle kiln

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bottle it (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bottle it.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bottle_it. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.