Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Definition: Bottleneck |
BottleneckNoun1. A narrowing that reduces the flow through a channel. Verb1. Slow down or impede by creating an obstruction; "His laziness has bottlenecked our efforts to reform the system". 2. Become narrow, like a bottleneck; "Right by the bridge, the road bottlenecks". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "bottleneck" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1991. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Building & Civil Engineering | A constriction along a travelled way which limits the amount of traffic which can proceed downstream from its location. Source: European Union. (references) |
Post & Telecom | A system capacity constraint that may reduce traffic during peak load conditions. Source: European Union. (references) |
Slang | Noun. Source: Biker Group. Definition: When there is an unexpected narrowing of the road up ahead. Context: Implies danger for the big group of riders. Social Source: Road Bike Racers. Source: Compiled by The University of Oregon. (additional references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A bottleneck is literally the neck of a glass or pottery bottle. An hourglass has a bottleneck at its mid-point whose diameter governs the time that granular contents of a given mass will take to pass through.Metaphorically a bottleneck is a section of a route with a carrying capacity substantially below that characterising other sections of the same route.
This is often a narrow part of a road, perhaps also with a smaller number of lanes, or a reduction of the number of tracks of a railway line.
It may be due to a narrow bridge or tunnel, a deep cutting or narrow embankment, or work in progress on part of the road or railway.
More generally, a bottleneck is one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain.
See also Performance problem, Population bottleneck.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Bottleneck."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
In evolution theory, a population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is an evolutionary event in which a significant percentage of a population or species is killed or otherwise prevented from reproducing, and the population is reduced by 50% or more, often by several orders of magnitude. A graph of this change resembles the neck of a bottle, from wide to narrow; hence the name.
In evolutionary theory, population bottlenecks are thought to accelerate the processes of natural selection and genetic drift.
Humans today are a legacy of a population bottleneck which occurred 70,000 years ago. This has had the result of limiting the overall level of genetic diversity in the human species, possibly by a large amount.
See also
population genetics - small population size - founder's effect - overpopulation - ice age - Black Death - AIDS - Toba catastrophe theory
External links
- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000110142554.htm
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Population bottleneck."
Synonym: BottleneckSynonym: constriction (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Bottleneck |
| English words defined with "bottleneck": sort, sorting. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "bottleneck": bottleneck traveling salesman ♦ choke point ♦ MIPS R2000. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Operation Bottleneck (1961) Baby Bottleneck (1946) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Bottleneck Peak, San Rafael Swell. Credit: Jerry Sintz. | |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "Bottleneck" by Emmanuel Rivet Commentary: "Bottleneck for slide guitar." | "Bottleneck" by Per Hardestam Commentary: "A bottle with olive oil." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| Play | Caption |
| Solo bottleneck guitar piece. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Business | However, although the national long distance and the international voice telephony markets have become very competitive, the major bottleneck - especially for Internet users - remains the local loop, which is still dominated by the former PTT Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG). (references) | |
Economic History | Bangladesh | The inadequate gas transmission system is considered by experts to be a serious bottleneck to growth. (references) |
Sri Lanka | The lack of long term domestic financing is another bottleneck to private sector infrastructure development. (references) | |
Bangladesh | The gas distribution bottleneck is being addressed by projects financed by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
Harry S. Truman | 1945-1953 | Additional price and wage adjustments will be made where necessary, and other steps will be taken to stimulate greater production of bottleneck items. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Bottleneck" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.33% of the time. "Bottleneck" is used about 60 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 98.33% | 59 | 44,010 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 1.67% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 60 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "bottleneck": traffic bottleneck. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "bottleneck"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | ngushtim rruge, grykë shisheje (neck of the bottle, throat). (various references) | |
Arabic | مضيق (gorge, isthmus, narrow, panhandle, sound, strait), مأزق (bind, corner, critical situation, deadlock, deep water, dilemma, fix, impasse, jam, logjam, pickle, plight, predicament, quandary, quicksands, stalemate), عنق الزجاجة (neck), طريق ضيق, ضيق (canyon, choke, close, contract, cramped, hardship, incommodious, malaise, narrow, narrowness, need, oppression, parochial, pinch, scrimpy, shrink, slit, straiten, straits, strict, succinctness, tag, tight, tighten, tightness), رأس القنينة. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | тесен вход, гърло на бутилка, заприщване. (various references) | |
Chinese | 瓶颈, 瓶頸 . (various references) | |
Czech | bolest (ache, agony, anguish, hurt, pain, unhappiness), zúžená cesta, úzký profil. (various references) | |
Danish | vejindsnævring (traffic bottleneck), flaskehals (traffic bottleneck). (various references) | |
Dutch | bottleneck in het verkeer (traffic bottleneck), bottleneck, verkeersknelpunt (traffic bottleneck), knelpunt (abashment, embarrassment, perplexity), flessenhals, flessehals (traffic bottleneck). (various references) | |
Farsi | تنگه (Canyon, Gut, Neck, Strait), تنگنا (Fix, Hairbreadth, Impasse, Jaw, Pinch, Strait, Warpath), تنگراه , راه خیلی باریک . (various references) | |
Finnish | pullonkaula. (various references) | |
French | goulot (traffic bottleneck), goulet (traffic bottleneck). (various references) | |
German | engpass (defile, narrow pass), flaschenhals (neck of a bottle), engpaß. (various references) | |
Greek | κώλυμα (bar, block, clog, drag, let, obstacle), κυκλοφοριακή στένωση (traffic bottleneck), συμφόρηση (congeries, congestion), στένωση (batter, constriction, narrowing, obstruction, stenosis), μποτιλιάρισμα (gridlock, tailback, traffic jam), λαιμόσ μπουκάλασ, λαιμόσ φιάλησ. (various references) | |
Hebrew | צואר הבקבוק. (various references) | |
Hungarian | palacknyak, torlódás (congestion, entanglement, jam, obstruction, piling), szűk kikötőbejárat (cove), szűk keresztmetszet, forgalom elakadása (blockage), útszűkület (road narrows). (various references) | |
Indonesian | leher botol, kemacetan (breakdown, jamming, logjam, shutdown, stoppage). (various references) | |
Italian | strozzatura (narrowing, waist), strettoia (narrow, tricky). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 隘路 (defile, narrow path), ネオン管 (drip-dry, import restriction list, Is it so?, nack chain, Nebraska, neck, neckerchief, necking, necklace, neckline, necktie, necktie pin, necrophilia, necrophobia, nector, negative, negative color, neglect, negligee, negotiation, Nelson, neon tube, nepenta, nephron, nephrosis, nepotism, Neptune, neptunium, Nescafe, -ness, nest, nest table, nesting, Nestle, net, net ball, Net citizen, net in, net play, net price, net score, netball falling in, netizen, net-mask, nettopology, network, network administration, networker, networking, Nevada, Never give up!, Never happen, Never mind, next, no carbon, no-iron, permanent snowpatch, Really?, several tables inside each other, tie, wash and wear). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ネック (neck), あいろ (defile, narrow path). (various references) | |
Korean | 좁은 통로. (various references) | |
Manx | scroag voteil, keyllys straiddey. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ottleneckbay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | gargalo (neck, throat), engarrafamento (foul-up, hold-up, traffic jam). (various references) | |
Russian | узкое место, узкий проход или проезд, горлышко бутылки (bottle neck, neck). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | usko grlo, grlić flaše. (various references) | |
Spanish | tapón (cap, capful, cover, plug, stopper, stopple, tampion, tampon, wad, wadding), gollete (neck), estrechamiento (narrowing), embotellamiento (block, hold up, jam, tie up, traffic jam), embollamiento (traffic jam), cuello de la botella, cuello de botella (traffic bottleneck), callejón sin salida (blind alley, cul de sac, dead end, impasse), abra (engpass, I shouldopen). (various references) | |
Swedish | flaskhals (traffic bottleneck). (various references) | |
Turkish | tıkanıklık (being choked up, blockage, congestion, deadlock, hold up, jam, stoppage, stuffiness, tie up), darboğaz (Strait), dar geçit (constriction, defile, throat). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "bottleneck": bottlenecked, bottlenecking, bottlenecks. (additional references) | |
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"Bottleneck" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: battleneck, bottelneck, buttleneck. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "bottleneck" (pronounced bÄ"tulne'k) |
| 6 | -t u l n e' k | turtleneck. |
| 3 | -n e' k | breakneck, redneck, ringneck, roughneck. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-c-e-e-k-l-n-o-t-t" | |
-3 letters: betoken. | |
-4 letters: becket, beckon, beknot, bolete, bottle, cenote, ketone, kettle, locket, nettle, obtect, telnet, tonlet. | |
-5 letters: betel, beton, blent, block, bloke, botel, celeb, cento, cleek, clone, clonk, coble, conte, elect, ketol, kneel, knelt, leben, lento, leone, lotte, noble, octet, tenet, token. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-c-e-e-k-l-n-o-t-t" | |
+1 letter: bottlenecks. | |
+2 letters: bottlenecked. | |
+3 letters: bottlenecking. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Sounds | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Quotations: Speeches 11. Usage Frequency 12. Expressions | 13. Expressions: Internet 14. Translations: Modern 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.