bottling up

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To put into bottles.
2. (transitive) To prevent (enemy vessels) from leaving an anchorage.
   • Paul Brunner spoke over his shoulder, "In the last war the cruiser Königsberg hid in an African river and made her repairs." / Kurt answered, "Yes, sir, but she didn't get out again. The Royal Navy bottled her up and finally destroyed her."1990, Alan Evans, Orphans of the Storm, London: Coronet Books, →ISBN, page 136
3. (idiomatic, transitive) To keep suppressed and hidden.
   • Emotions are often bottled up rather than dealt with, which can lead to stress in later life.
4. (informal, transitive) To comprehensively defeat.
   • Leosthenes defeated Antipater in battle—the first defeat of a Macedonian army for thirty years—and bottled him up in the town of Lamia.2011, Robin Waterfield, Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 39
5. (slang, transitive) To prevent (an opponent) from achieving any effective action.
   • Darrion Trammell and San Diego State used a dominant defensive performance to knock top overall seed Alabama out of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night, bottling up All-America freshman Brandon Miller in a 71-64 victory in the Sweet 16.2023 March 25, “San Diego State ousts Alabama as all four No. 1 seeds fall short of Elite 8 for 1st time”, in CBC News, archived from the original on 08 Apr 2023