The Etymology of Bottle
Bottle reached English around 1375 from Old French boteille, descended from Vulgar Latin butticula, a diminutive of Late Latin buttis, a cask or barrel. For most of its history the English word covered any narrow-necked vessel for liquids — leather flasks, earthenware jugs, even small wooden firkins. The familiar glass bottle, blown and corked, became common only after the 1630s, when English glassmakers perfected dark, sturdy wine bottles strong enough to hold pressure. The same Latin root buttis also produced butt (a large cask, surviving in water-butt and in winemaking measures), French bouteille, Italian bottiglia, and Spanish botella. British slang has its own offshoot: bottle meaning courage (as in lose one’s bottle, 1958), perhaps from rhyming slang bottle and glass for class, or perhaps an unrelated coinage from milk-bottle daring.