[f. BOTTLE sb.2]
1. trans. To put into a bottle for the purpose of storing or keeping. Often with up. To bottle off: to transfer (liquors) from the cask into bottles.
1641. French, Distill., v. (1651), 122. Let it stand a week, and then bottle it up.
1650. H. More, in Enthus. Triumph. (1656), 111. How so subtil a thing as this Anima is, can be either barrel’d up, or bottled up, or tied up in a bag, as a pig in a poke!
1769. Mrs. Raffald, Eng. Housekpr. (1778), 321. Let it stand seven weeks, then bottle it.
1807. Southey, Espriella’s Lett. (1814), III. 272. You might as reasonably attempt to dissect a bubble, or to bottle moonshine.
1882. Garden, 18 March, 183/3. Keeping Grapes after they are bottled.
1885. H. Conway, Fam. Affair, ix. 70. They were very busy bottling off a quarter cask of sherry.
2. fig. To store up as in bottles; to keep under restraint (anger or other feelings); to shut up, in, down, out.
1622. T. Scott, Belg. Pismire, 53. Vapours … botteled vp in cloudes.
a. 1711. Ken, Anodynes, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 429. He … Bottles my Tears, accepts my Prayers.
1853. H. Drummond, in Croker Papers (1884), III. xxviii. 268. Twenty years of wrath bottled up.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm., xxii. 486. To anticipate the process of being ourselves bottled in, by bottling the country out.
1865. Sat. Rev., 7 Jan., 23/1. To catch and bottle up his now evaporated ‘Spirit of the East.’
