Word.ws English Dictionary

new wine in old bottles

new wine in old bottles is the alternative form of new wine in an old bottle.

Meaning of new wine in an old bottle

Noun

new wine in an old bottle (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A significant change introduced to an entrenched system or method.
    • But Western analysts have remained skeptical, calling the missiles, modified versions of existing conventional munitions, “new wine in old bottles.”2023 May 6, Marc Santora, Eric Schmitt, John Ismay, “Ukraine Claims It Shot Down Russia’s Most Sophisticated Missile for First Time”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  2. (idiomatic) A new thing passed off as old.

Questions about new wine in old bottles

What is new wine in old bottles the alternative form of?
New wine in old bottles is the alternative form of new wine in an old bottle.

Words near new wine in old bottles in the dictionary

  1. New Whittington
  2. New Windsor
  3. new wine
  4. new wine in an old bottle
  5. new wine in an old wineskin
  6. new wine in old bottles
  7. new wine in old wineskins
  8. new wines
  9. New Woman
  10. New Women
  11. New World

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: new wine in old bottles (page history and authors); new wine in an old bottle (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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