bottle up

British  

verb

1. to restrain (powerful emotion)

2. to keep (an army or other force) contained or trapped

   the French fleet was bottled up in Le Havre

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bottle up Idioms  

1. Repress, contain, hold back; also, confine or trap. For example, The psychiatrist said Eve had been bottling up her anger for years, or The accident bottled up traffic for miles. This idiom likens other kinds of restraint to liquid being contained in a bottle. [Mid-1800s]

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Example Sentences

Judy Domingo, president of the 50,000-strong United Filipino Seafarers union, told AFP she had taken hundreds of calls from concerned sailors bottled up in the strait, with food supplies one of the immediate concerns.

From Barron's

Hawthorne’s Rome is a city of artists who gather from all over the world to drink in the cultural dynamism bottled up in its millennia of great art.

From The Wall Street Journal

Durant, bottled up in a first half that saw him attempt just three shots, finished with 20 points on 6-of-10 shooting.

From Barron's

But nearly two years later, water started to ooze from a different well in the same area, a sign that bottling up the geyser likely repressurized the subsurface and triggered the new outburst, scientists said.

From The Wall Street Journal

So the establishment decided to bottle up the flavours of its "fermentation lab" and "test kitchen".

From Barron's

Related Words

• repress
• suppress