I. ˈbä-t ə l-ˌnek adjective
Date: 1896
: narrow
bottleneck harbors
II. noun
Date: 1907
1.
a. : a narrow route
b. : a point of traffic congestion
2.
a. : someone or something that retards or halts free movement and progress
b. : impasse
c. : a dramatic reduction in the size of a population (as of a species) that results in a decrease in genetic variation
3. : a style of guitar playing in which glissando effects are produced by sliding an object (as a knife blade or the neck of a bottle) along the strings — called also bottleneck guitar
III. transitive verb
Date: 1933
: to slow or halt by causing a bottleneck