1. a narrow section of a road or path where traffic flow is restricted
2. a point of congestion or blockage that slows or halts progress
3. the narrow neck of a bottle

1. to slow or halt progress by creating a restriction

Examples

• Traffic was backed up for miles due to a bottleneck at the bridge.
• The approval process became a bottleneck that delayed the project.
• She gripped the bottle by its bottleneck.
• Limited funding will bottleneck our research efforts.
• The narrow hallway created a bottleneck during the fire drill.
• Poor communication bottlenecked the entire operation.
• We need to identify what’s causing the bottleneck in production.