bottleneck
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Any narrowing of the road.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
bahtuhlnekSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbɑtəlnɛk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
figurative
In traffic, any narrowing of the road, especially resulting in a delay.
The narrow part of a bottle near the top
The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle.
by extension
The part of a process that is too slow or cumbersome.
verb
transitive
To slow by causing a bottleneck.
Become narrow, like a bottleneck
“Right by the bridge, the road bottlenecks.”
intransitive
To form a bottleneck.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: In traffic, any narrowing of the road, especially resulting in a delay.
Used this way, bottleneck is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use bottleneck
- “His laziness has bottlenecked our efforts to reform the system.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: in traffic or any narrowing of the road
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.