Word.ws English Dictionary

bottom out

bottom out verb: to reach the bottom; to reach the nadir or lowest point.

Verb

bottom out (third-person singular simple present bottoms out, present participle bottoming out, simple past and past participle bottomed out)

  1. (intransitive) To reach the bottom; to reach the nadir or lowest point.
  2. (idiomatic) Of a vehicle, to touch or drag along the ground or other surface.
    • Going over that speed bump, my car bottomed out.
  3. (idiomatic) Of a vessel, to touch the bottom of a water body.
  4. Of a suspension or similar device, to strike the lower mechanical stop and lose the ability to buffer further downward motion.
    • The hard landing caused the oleos to bottom out and the gear struts collapsed.
  5. (intransitive, slang) To fully anally penetrate.
  6. (idiomatic, intransitive) To be, at a basic level.
    • The problem bottoms out into a management issue.

Forms of bottom out

third-person singular presentbottoms out
present participlebottoming out
past participlebottomed out
pastbottomed out

Questions about bottom out

What does bottom out mean?
Bottom out means to reach the bottom; to reach the nadir or lowest point.
What part of speech is bottom out?
Bottom out is a verb.
What is the past tense of bottom out?
The past tense of bottom out is bottomed out.

Words near bottom out in the dictionary

  1. bottom of the ninth
  2. bottom of the sea
  3. bottom of the table
  4. bottom on
  5. bottom order
  6. bottom out
  7. bottom pair
  8. bottom pairs
  9. bottom power
  10. bottom quark
  11. bottom quarks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bottom out (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bottom out.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bottom out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bottom_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.