bottleneck

1 of 3

adjective

bot·​tle·​neck ˈbä-tᵊl-ˌnek 

: narrow

bottleneck harbors

bottleneck

2 of 3

noun

plural bottlenecks

1

a

: a narrow route

b

: a point of traffic congestion

2

a

: someone or something that slows or halts free movement and progress

working to streamline production and eliminate bottlenecks

b

: impasse

They reached a bottleneck in the negotiations.

c

: a dramatic reduction in the size of a population (as of a species) that results in a decrease in genetic variation

3

or bottleneck guitar : a style of guitar playing in which glissando effects are produced by sliding an object (such as a knife blade or the neck of a bottle) along the strings

bottleneck

3 of 3

verb

bottlenecked; bottlenecking; bottlenecks

transitive verb

: to slow or halt by causing a bottleneck

Synonyms of bottleneck

Noun

• jam
• congestion

Examples of bottleneck in a Sentence

Noun

Bridge construction has created a bottleneck on the southern part of Main Street.

All decisions must be approved by the committee, and this is where the company runs into bottlenecks.

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

The deeper issue is a training bottleneck — and a misalignment between where doctors are trained and where they are needed. —Jocelyn Mitchell-Williams, STAT, 19 June 2026

This shift makes verifying human presence and agent accountability the new bottleneck, rather than just AI intelligence. —Sean Lee, Forbes.com, 19 June 2026

Verb

Trump added that oil exports from Iran could once again be bottlenecked at the Strait of Hormuz if the United States renews military strikes on Iran. —Joey Garrison, USA Today, 19 June 2026

Early this year, the Cursor team said its future growth was bottlenecked on compute. —Samuel Axon, ArsTechnica, 16 June 2026

Word History

First Known Use

Adjective

1854, in the meaning defined above

Noun

1850, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Verb

1919, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing bottleneck

• bottleneck guitar

Rhymes for bottleneck

• biotech
• quarterdeck
• turtleneck
• zapotec
• aztec
• breakneck
• codec
• exec
• mixtec
• paycheck
• pinchbeck
• recheck

Kids Definition

bottleneck

noun

bot·​tle·​neck

ˈbät-ᵊl-ˌnek

1

: a narrow passageway

2

: someone or something that holds up progress

a traffic bottleneck