Learn English – Losing bottles and bottling out

british-englishetymologyusage

ODO's definition for bottle includes the following:

2 [mass noun] British informal the courage or confidence needed to do something difficult or dangerous:
I lost my bottle completely and ran

bottle out
British informal lose one’s nerve and decide not to do something:
the Minister has bottled out of real reforms

Where does this use of the word bottle come from? Both the examples in the ODO definition are negative in connotation; are there positive ones too? Can someone have the bottle to do something?

Best Answer

According to this site (linked to by FF in a comment to Andrew's answer), the following are all possible origins for the term:

  1. Cockney rhyming slang: bottle = bottle and glass = arse. To lose one's bottle = lose one's arse, i.e. bowel movement = show extreme fear = lose courage. Therefore, to have bottle is to have courage; to bottle out is to show cowardice.
  2. bottle = bottle and glass = class = merit or distinction which, in Cockney terms, would include an ability to stand up for oneself.
  3. Those who find these explanations over-elaborate prefer to locate the origin in the bottle-holder who acted as a second for a prize-fighter, using both the contents of the bottle and other skills to keep up his man's fighting spirit during a bout.
  4. The simplest and probably the best explanation is that bottle originally stood for the courage that comes out of a bottle and has gradually come to mean genuine courage.