Definition of "bottle up" [bottle up]

• Put into bottles (verb)
• (idiomatic) Keep suppressed and hidden (verb)

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• ""Well, anyway, I mean M'rice has to give the bottle up the minute he stops swallering.""
• "Young Mr. Richard Pearson Hobson, who had tried-and failed-to bottle up the Spanish ships in Santiago Bay by sinking a collier across the mouth of the harbor, became, for his pains, "the most kissed man in America.""
• "Milne had now been assigned four tasks: he was to support the French in protecting the troop convoys in the western Mediterranean; he was to observe and bottle up the Austrians in the Adriatic; he was to find and sink Goeben wherever she was; and he was to prevent the German battle cruiser from breaking out past Gibraltar."