A bottle is a portable container with a narrow neck and wider body for holding liquids such as wine or milk. It can also be used to store and preserve fruit or vegetables by heating them to the right temperature before sealing them in a glass jar. A person can also use the term to refer to any kind of intoxicating drink, especially alcoholic beverages such as beer or whiskey. In 19th century slang, the word was sometimes used to describe an actor who was “addicted to the bottle.”
A person might also use the phrase to talk about someone who spends too much time over a bottle of alcohol. This could be a friend or family member who has become heavily dependent on drinking. Alternatively, the phrase might be used to describe an actor who is a poor performer on stage or in the movies. A person who is considered to be “in the bottle” can be very difficult to work with or to be around because of their drinking problems.
In many cases, a person who is “in the bottle” will try to hide their problem from others in order to avoid embarrassment or ridicule. This can lead to serious problems for the person and other people involved in the situation, particularly if the addiction is causing them to lose their job or career prospects.
The origin of the modern-day bottle is uncertain, but the first glass bottles are generally thought to have been shaped and decorated by ancient Egyptian artisans. The earliest bottles were made by covering silica paste cores with molten glass and digging out the core after the glass had hardened. Later, glassblowing techniques were developed that allowed the manufacture of bottles with more complex and decorative shapes.
Glass bottles offer highly effective protection of their contents, and they are attractive because of their transparency and high gloss. They are also relatively inexpensive on a per-use basis, although the costs of repeated handling can dissipate any savings. Bottles can be made from a wide variety of materials, including plastic, but glass is still the most common material.
Single-use bottles that are discarded after a product is consumed often end up in the ocean, where they drift with the wind and currents until they reach one of the five major systems of rotating ocean currents known as gyres. These gyres are the source of the well-known Pacific Garbage Patch, which is composed of millions of plastic water and soda bottles and other debris that has been carried to the surface by winds and currents. The plastic bottles then take hundreds of years to break down into microplastics that are absorbed by marine life and can be mistaken for food by many species of fish. National Geographic Explorer Heather J. Koldewey works to empower communities around the world to participate in solving the global problem of ocean pollution from single-use plastics by taking incremental individual actions, such as reducing their use of single-use bottles through a campaign called One Less.