A container made of impermeable material in various shapes and sizes, typically with a narrow neck, that stores and transports liquids. Bottle is also used as an adjective, referring to a particular bottle or the shape of a bottle.
Bottleneck – The area of the bottle’s neck that is narrowest, containing the mouth and seal. This area may be a natural’shoulder’ or a sloping shoulder, such as in the bottle type known as a Bordeaux (pictured to the right).
The neck may also contain a pronounced swell at its base, such as in the Champagne bottle. This swell is known as the ‘lip’ or ‘puntilate’ and helps to provide strength to the glass and hold the cork in place.
Body – The main content containing portion of a bottle, lying between the neck and the heel (insweep). See the General Bottle Morphology page for an illustration of a bottle’s body.
Embossing – Raised lettering, designs, or graphics on the surface of a bottle formed by incising on the mold surface(s). See the General Bottle Characteristics & Mold Seams page for an illustration of an embossed Hutchinson style soda bottle from the early years of the 20th century.
Finish – The “top” of the bottle, either an external screw thread or a ground finish without screw threads. The term is generally reserved for hand-blown bottles; however, a ground finish on a machine-made bottle is technically the “finish” or “lip” of the bottle (Munsey 1970).
Bocca – An opening in the side of a glass furnace through which workers make gathers of glass batch. Those gathers are then pulled through the bottle mold (see image to left, taken from a late 19th century trade card).
Blow mold – The mold within which the parison – a slightly inflated gob of glass – is expanded into the final form of a bottle during a hand blowing process; it is the second machine mold in the case of semi-automatic or fully automatic bottles. (See the General Bottle Morphology page for an explanation of the process).
This is not to be confused with the “bottle episode” – a TV episode that has so many technical flaws or production issues that it is essentially unwatchable. For example, a show filmed in an apartment with lots of extras, and the action all takes place inside the house – is a bottle episode. The number of extras and the size of the apartment is not really that important in this context, but it does make a difference to the viewer’s ability to follow what is going on.