Bottleneck

Origin

bottle + neck

Full definition of bottleneck

Noun

1. The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle.
2. In traffic, any narrowing of the road, especially resulting in a delay.
3. Any delay; part of a process that is too slow or cumbersome.It is easy to create entries; processing the paperwork is the bottleneck.The bottleneck in this computer program is the inefficient sorting process; we should replace it with a faster one.

Verb

1. (transitive) To slow by causing a bottleneck.The merge bottlenecked the traffic every morning.
2. (intransitive) To form a bottleneck.The traffic bottlenecked at the merge every morning.