bottle up
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU): (file)
Verb
bottle up (third-person singular simple present bottles up, present participle bottling up, simple past and past participle bottled up)
- (transitive) To put into bottles.
- (transitive) To prevent (enemy vessels) from leaving an anchorage.
- (transitive, idiomatic) To keep suppressed and hidden.
- Emotions are often bottled up rather than dealt with, which can lead to stress in later life.
- 1990, Ronald Reagan, An American Life[1], Pocket Books, →ISBN, pages 372-373:
- Only history can tell us where China will go from here. The Chinese leadership's brutal crackdown on students seeking fundamental democratic rights makes it difficult to chart the future. Those brave students who laid down their lives against the tanks of Tiananmen Square confirmed what I'd always believed: that no totalitarian society can bottle up the instinctive drive of men and women to be free, and that once you give a captive people a little freedom, they'll demand still more.
Translations
to put into bottles
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to prevent enemy vessels of leaving an anchorage
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