Wiktionary

bottle up

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bottle up (third-person singular simple present bottles up, present participle bottling up, simple past and past participle bottled up) (transitive)

  1. To put into bottles.
  2. To prevent (enemy vessels) from leaving an anchorage.
    • 1990, Alan Evans, Orphans of the Storm, London: Coronet Books, →ISBN, page 136:
      Paul Brunner spoke over his shoulder, "In the last war the cruiser Königsberg hid in an African river and made her repairs." / Kurt answered, "Yes, sir, but she didn't get out again. The Royal Navy bottled her up and finally destroyed her."
  3. (idiomatic) To keep suppressed and hidden.
    Emotions are often bottled up rather than dealt with, which can lead to stress in later life.
    • 1990, Ronald Reagan, [Robert Lindsey], An American Life, New York, N.Y. […]: Pocket Books, →ISBN, page 373:
      Those brave students who laid down their lives against the tanks of Tiananmen Square confirmed what I'd always believed: that no totalitarian society can bottle up the instinctive drive of men and women to be free, and that once you give a captive people a little freedom, they'll demand more.
  4. (informal) To comprehensively defeat.
    • 2011, Robin Waterfield, Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 39:
      Leosthenes defeated Antipater in battle—the first defeat of a Macedonian army for thirty years—and bottled him up in the town of Lamia.
  5. (sports, slang) To prevent (an opponent) from achieving any effective action.
    • 2023 March 25, “San Diego State ousts Alabama as all four No. 1 seeds fall short of Elite 8 for 1st time”, in CBC News‎[1], archived from the original on 2023-04-08:
      Darrion Trammell and San Diego State used a dominant defensive performance to knock top overall seed Alabama out of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night, bottling up All-America freshman Brandon Miller in a 71-64 victory in the Sweet 16.
    • 2013 June 13, Nick Friedell, “Spoelstra, Heat bow out with 'no regrets on our end'”, in ABC News‎[2], archived from the original on 2023-06-14:
      Arguably the most important sequence of the game came with less than 30 seconds to play and the Nuggets clinging to a 90-89 lead. Butler drove to the rim but got bottled up in the post by Murray and Jokic then tried to find teammate Max Strus in the corner, but the ball was stolen by Nuggets swingman Kentavious Caldwell-Pope -- and the Heat were forced to foul.

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