the bottle

   1. an addiction to intoxicants

   Bottles and intemperance have long gone together, especially if the preference is for wines and spirits:

    The bottle was enjoyed by both as a launching pad for the missile of social grace. (Ustinov, 1971)

   To take to the bottle or bother the bottle is to be an alcoholic:

    Mitzi had taken to the bottle, since reality was too bleak for her. (Ustinov, 1966)

    It's not madness to drink in all this, though he bothers the bottle mightily. (Winton, 1994)

   The regimen of the baby invites many puns, of which on the bottle is most common:

    I doubt whether Mama is particularly fond of sloppy philosophers who are always on the bottle. (Gaarder, 1996, in translation)

   To circulate the bottle is to invite successive people to drink wine, and to do so freely implies drunkenness among them:

    I had dined at the Duke of Montrose's, with a very agreeable party, and his Grace, according to his usual custom, had circulated the bottle freely. (J. Boswell, 1791)

   Bottled means drunk:

    We none of us were ever quiet when we was bottled. (Cookson, 1967)

   2. an act of urination

   A shaped glass container is used by a recumbent male in a sickbed:

    You don't want the bottle, or anything like that? You're ready to see your visitor? (Price, 1979, of a hospital patient)

   3. to sodomize

   Rhyming slang on bottle and glass, arse:

    I want to bottle you, mate, Tom says. Kim has never heard the expression but he immediately understands it. (Burroughs, 1984)

   4. courage

   Only euphemistic when you lose it, but not only of Dutch courage:

    He couldn't face up to the fact that his bottle had gone. (Strong, 1997 — he was an adult who had lost his nerve, not a baby crying in a cot)

   5. British

   to injure with a broken glass bottle used as a weapon

   The jargon of aggressive youths who habituate bars and nightclubs:

    People are 'bottled' or 'glassed' for catching a stranger's eye. {Sunday Telegraph, 23 January 2000)