bottles

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bottle.

   Rows of wine bottles lined the cellar walls.

   The factory fills thousands of glass bottles every hour.

   Note

   The plural does double duty, counting either the containers or what is in them: to finish two bottles of wine is to drink the wine, not the glass. It also covers the infant's feeding bottle, so baby bottles needs no gloss. The British slang 'bottle' meaning nerve began as rhyming slang ('bottle and glass' for 'arse'). It names a quality rather than an object, so it sits awkwardly in the plural.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of bottle.

   The brewery bottles its beer on site before shipping it nationwide.

   Each fall she bottles her own hot sauce to give as gifts.

   Note

   Nearly always transitive, it takes the thing being sealed as its object: a brewery bottles its beer, a cook bottles tomatoes. British slang adds a sharper set. A player who bottles a penalty loses nerve at the last moment, and a team that bottles a lead throws it away. A crowd that bottles a band pelts it with bottles. The loss-of-nerve use comes from the rhyming slang behind the noun's 'nerve' meaning.

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