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PlainSpell

bottleneck

noun, verb

bottleneck is spelled B-O-T-T-L-E-N-E-C-K: 10 letters and 3 syllables. It appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 30,017th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, bottleneck means “The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of bottleneck is bottlenecks.

How many letters and syllables are in bottleneck?

Letters10: B-O-T-T-L-E-N-E-C-K
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writingabout once in every 1 million words; the 30,017th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How common is bottleneck?

Bottleneck appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 30,017th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce bottleneck?

  • US

Bottleneck has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-bottleneck.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of bottleneck

  • bottlenecks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • bottlenecking participle, present
  • bottlenecked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does bottleneck mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle.

  2. 2

    A portion of a bottleneck placed on the finger and used as a guitar slide.

  3. 3

    In traffic, any narrowing of the road, especially resulting in a delay.

  4. 4

    The part of a process that is too slow or cumbersome due to the lessening of available throughput.

    It is easy to create entries; processing the paperwork is the bottleneck.

verb

  1. 1

    To slow by causing a bottleneck.

    The merge bottlenecked the traffic every morning.

  2. 2

    To form a bottleneck.

    The traffic bottlenecked at the merge every morning.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Bottleneck in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchgoulot, goulot de bouteille, tête de bouteille (neck of a bottle), goulet d'étranglement (part of a process that is too slow or cumbersome)
GermanFlaschenhals (neck of a bottle), Engstelle, Engpass (narrowing of the road, especially resulting in…)
Portuguesegargalo (neck of a bottle), engarrafamento (narrowing of the road, especially resulting in…)
Spanishcuello de botella (neck of a bottle), cuello, garganta, embotellamiento, boquerón, gollete (narrowing of the road, especially resulting in…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does bottleneck come from?

From bottle + neck.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

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