bottle
noun, verbInformal
A British English slang term. Browse all British slang.
What it means
Nerve, courage. He didn't have the bottle to ask.
To bottle it: to lose one's nerve at the decisive moment.
In use
It took some bottle to stand up and say that.
He bottled it on the penalty.
Where it comes from
Usually traced to rhyming slang. The reversal is neat: to have bottle is to be brave, but to bottle it is to be a coward.
Other forms
- Similar terms:
- nerve, guts