Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A narrow or obstructed section, as of a highway or a pipeline.
- n. A point or an area of traffic congestion.
- n. A hindrance to progress or production.
- n. The narrow part of a bottle near the top.
- n. Music A style of guitar playing in which an object, such as a piece of glass or metal, is passed across the strings to achieve a gliding sound.
- v. To slow down or impede by creating an obstruction.
Wiktionary
- n. The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle.
- n. In traffic, any narrowing of the road, especially resulting in a delay.
- n. Any delay; part of a process that is too slow or cumbersome.
- v. transitive To slow by causing a bottleneck.
- v. intransitive To form a bottleneck.
GNU Webster's 1913
- a location or situation in which otherwise rapid progress is impeded.
- a point at which road traffic slows due to congestion or narrowing of the roadway.
- an impasse.
- a narrowing.
- v. same as obstruct.
- v. to become narrower as one approaches a point; -- said of roads.
WordNet 3.0
- v. slow down or impede by creating an obstruction
- n. the narrow part of a bottle near the top
- v. become narrow, like a bottleneck
- n. a narrowing that reduces the flow through a channel
Etymologies
- bottle + neck (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Transferring large files over the network to another computer or NAS would be noticeably slower but accessing the Internet will still seem “fast” as the bottleneck is the Internet connection, not this 2nd AP link.”
DD-WRT: Setting up a home Wireless Distribution System (WDS) — Meandering Passage
“Renowned evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson has propounded what he terms the bottleneck theory: that maximum pressure on the natural world will occur this century as human population peaks, after which a declining human population will supposedly ease that pressure.”
“This is a concentration point; it's what we call a bottleneck," says Bob Petitt, president of the migration observatory at nearby Holiday Beach Conservation Area.”
“In terms of shooting at high-value targets, the bottleneck is intelligence.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » The Changing Conflict in Pakistan, and Targeted Killing
“The main bottleneck, says David Kohn, Waterstone's "head of commerce", is that there are not enough e-books out there.”
“I share the writer's speculation that most of these drivers are rush-hour veterans, people who should realize the best way for motorists to ease a bottleneck is to cooperate rather than compete.”
The Washington Post: Is bad driver behavior at merge points a result of bad design?
“One cause of the bottleneck is that the Pantex plant is the only NNSA facility that can assemble and dismantle nuclear weapons.”
The Washington Post: Story of B-53 'bunker buster' is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons
“This becomes, quite literally, the main bottleneck to my vocal production.”
“The bottleneck is the exercise of sovereignty - the right of a nation to operate within its 'borders as it sees fit.”
“Ironically, we have the panels and personnel to complete your job, it is only the lease financing that remains a short-term bottleneck, and we do expect to solve that problem soon,”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bottleneck’.
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TRAN - general terms
The vocabulary of transport policy
waterborne transport, mode of transport, transmission shaft, transhipped cargo, sustainable mobility, trans-european ne..., roll on - roll off, supply of service..., satellite navigation, reduction of emis..., promote internati..., unleaded petrol and 176 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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AFET - diplomacy
broker a peace ac..., client state, deadlocked peace ..., embassy, freeze, goodwill ambassador, hinterland, interfere in dome..., intervene personally, maintain technica..., mediation, no business as usual and 670 more...
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Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
WF - nominal compounds (figurative)
An extensive list I have been working on for quite some time. Feel free to add more of the kind if you miss any.
brainstorming, upside, downside, goldplating, bikeshedding, mudslinging, downgrading, headhunter, streamlining, mainstreaming, gerrymandering, frontloading and 503 more...
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Bottles
wine bottle, beer bottle, ketchup bottle, bottleneck, bottlenose dolphin, 99 bottles of bee..., baby bottle, pop bottle, bottle of perfume, water bottle, shampoo bottle, medicine bottle and 6 more...
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Physical anthropology
acclimatization, adriatic, aegyptid, aeta, aethiopid, africoid, ainuid, aistin, alae, alare, albino, allele and 202 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Guitarist's Glossary
frets, fretboard, neck, peghead, headstock, tuners, tuning machines, strings, bridge, tremolo, whammy bar, sound hole and 201 more...
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Amusing words
interesting words
bonce, furcate, tapioca, tillage, desalinate, garish, litmus, roadhog, azoic, haberdasher, imbroglio, polliwog and 802 more...
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implify's Words
gaia, eviscerate, lament, ephemeral, urbane, blight, variant, schadenfreude, hubbub, iteration, feign, hobgoblin and 243 more...
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What's the Sitch?
Situations.
gas and gaiter, sitting pretty, kettle of fish, new ballgame, dunghill, maelstrom, how-do-you-do, minefield, hotbed, hot potato, time bomb, ticking bomb and 29 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bottleneck.
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