Bottleneck

  

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

Bottleneck

Definition: Bottleneck

Bottleneck

Noun

1. A narrowing that reduces the flow through a channel.

Verb

1. 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)

 

Specialty Definition: Bottleneck

DomainDefinition

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.

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Specialty Definition: Bottleneck

(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."

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Population 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

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Synonym: Bottleneck

Synonym: constriction (n). (additional references)

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Crosswords: Bottleneck

English words defined with "bottleneck": sort, sorting. (references)
Specialty definitions using "bottleneck": bottleneck traveling salesmanchoke pointMIPS R2000. (references)

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Modern Usage: Bottleneck

DomainUsage

Movie/TV Titles

Operation Bottleneck (1961)

Baby Bottleneck (1946)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Bottleneck

DomainTitle

Books

  • Bottleneck Blues Guitar (reference)

  • Breaking the Metro Bottleneck [DOWNLOAD: PDF] (reference)

  • Mel Bay Presents Learn to Play Bottleneck Guitar (reference)

  • Slide Guitar: A Book/Record Guide to Electric Lead and Traditional Slide and Bottleneck Styles. (reference)

  • The Bottleneck and the Mole Hole (Fun Guys) (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Theater & Movies

  • Learn to Play Bottleneck Blues, Video One (reference)

    (more DVD examples; more video examples)

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Photo Album: Bottleneck

ThumbnailDescription & 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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Digital Photo Gallery: Bottleneck
 

"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.

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Sounds Captioned with "Bottleneck".

PlayCaption
Solo bottleneck guitar piece.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Bottleneck

SubjectTopicQuote

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.

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Speeches: Bottleneck

SpeakerTermPhrase(s)

Harry S. Truman

1945-1953Additional 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.

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Usage Frequency: Bottleneck

"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 SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words
Rank in English
Noun (singular)98.33%5944,010
Lexical Verb (base form)1.67%1339,140
                    Total100.00%60N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expression: Bottleneck

Expression using "bottleneck": traffic bottleneck. Additional references.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Bottleneck

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.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

bottleneck

71

bottleneck movie

28

bottleneck lawrence

15

bar blues bottleneck

8

bottleneck ks lawrence

7

bottleneck kansas lawrence

7

bottleneck guitar

6

bottleneck cycle in instruction memory reducing

4

network bottleneck

3

blues bottleneck

3

bottleneck effect

2

production bottleneck

2

bottleneck slide

2

bottleneck kansas

2

area bottleneck local network

2

black bottleneck lucas

2

bottleneck identify performance

2

bottleneck fayette

2

bottleneck memory

2

bottleneck cycle in instruction memory

2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Bottleneck

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.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Bottleneck

Derivations

Words beginning with "bottleneck": bottlenecked, bottlenecking, bottlenecks. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Bottleneck" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: battleneck, bottelneck, buttleneck. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Bottleneck"

# of Phoneme MatchesPronunciationWord(s) rhyming with "bottleneck" (pronounced bÄ"tulne'k)
6-t u l n e' kturtleneck.
3-n e' kbreakneck, redneck, ringneck, roughneck.

Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Bottleneck

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.

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INDEX

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.