bottleneck

American  

[bot-l-nek] / ˈbɒt lˌnɛk /

noun

bottlenecks plural

1. a narrow entrance or passageway.

2. a place or stage in a process at which progress is impeded.

3. Also called slide guitar.  a method of guitar playing that produces a gliding sound by pressing a metal bar or glass tube against the strings.

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verb (used with object)

1. to hamper or confine by or as if by a bottleneck.

verb (used without object)

1. to become hindered by or as if by a bottleneck.

bottleneck British  

/ ˈbɒtəlˌnɛk /

noun

1. 1. a narrow stretch of road or a junction at which traffic is or may be held up

   2. the hold up

2. something that holds up progress, esp of a manufacturing process

3. music

   1. the broken-off neck of a bottle placed over a finger and used to produce a buzzing effect in a style of guitar-playing originally part of the American blues tradition

   2. the style of guitar playing using a bottleneck

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verb

1. (tr) to be or cause an obstruction in

bottleneck Scientific  

/ bŏt′l-nĕk′ /

1. An abrupt and severe reduction in the number of individuals during the history of a species, resulting in the loss of diversity from the gene pool. The generations following the bottleneck are more genetically homogenous than would otherwise be expected. Bottlenecks often occur in consequence of a catastrophic event.

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bottleneck Cultural  

1. The point at which an industry or economic system has to slow its growth because one or more of its components cannot keep up with demand.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• bottlenecks
  plural

Etymology

Origin of bottleneck

First recorded in 1895–1900; bottle ¹ + neck

Explanation

A bottleneck is a type of traffic jam, when cars get stuck or slowed down in a narrow part of the roadway. You might leave work two hours later than usual to avoid a bottleneck. Anything that gets stalled in a narrow area, whether it's auto traffic or pedestrians, can be called a bottleneck. Information can also get stuck in a kind of bottleneck, if the system itself creates a delay. The term comes from the shape of an actual bottleneck, or the narrow neck or mouth of a bottle.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bottleneck bottlenecks

"Investors are still desperate for anything bolted to AI infrastructure, especially if it sits close to the high-bandwidth memory bottleneck."

From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026

A population bottleneck occurs when a group becomes very small, reducing genetic variation.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026

“Whenever you get a supply bottleneck, people figure ways around it,” Meir said.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

The manufacturing process has created a bottleneck in supply, said dairy economist Leonard Polzin, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026

Fortunately, the rest of the brain is equipped with a workaround for the bottleneck.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Supply-chain bottlenecks forced companies to rethink their dependence on overseas suppliers in favor of more domestic sourcing and inventory stocking that required factories and warehouses.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026

Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment, which are closest to the physical bottlenecks of the AI buildout, have been among the sectors benefitting most from the spending boom.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 12, 2026

“The fundamentals, the demand coming through at these bottlenecks — whether it be memory or cooling or networking — they’re real,” Mortimore said.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026

“The AI buildout has recently been facing growing bottlenecks in electricity, advanced semiconductors and grid equipment,” the BIS said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026

Unfortunately, the nanoseconds used up in a simple computer operation do add up to lengthy bottlenecks on intractable problems, many of which would require millennia to solve in general.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

Related Words

• barrier
• blockage
• congestion
• hindrance
• impediment
• snag
• traffic jam