2010-11-29
2 分钟This is a download from the BBC.
For more information and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts this is the Keep your English up to date podcast from BBCLearningEnglish.com in this week's program, John Ato explores the origin, meaning and use of the word bottle and bottler.
Brown the bottler.
The placards said Gordon Brown had recently taken over as Prime Minister of Britain in 2007, and he'd been thinking of holding a general election to confirm his leadership.
Then he suddenly seems to have been struck by terrible doubts over whether he'd win.
So he decided not to have an election.
After all, his enemies accused him of being scared of, to use a different metaphor, chickening out.
And that's what bottler means in British slang.
A person who lacks the courage to go through with something.
But why?
It all goes back to a rather strange use of bottle to mean bravery or nerve, which has been around for nearly a century now.
So if someone has lost their bottle, they've lost their nerve.
They're afraid.
The verb to bottle soon followed.
You could bottle out of something or simply bottle it if you didn't have the guts to do it.
And so we got bottler.
But the original question, why remains.
There's an old slang expression, no bottle, meaning no good, which may have something to do with it, and it's often claimed that it's linked with Cockney rhyming slang.
Bottle and glass, that stands for ass.
And various not entirely convincing attempts have been made to connect that with the idea of courage and a word of warning.