Idiom
bottled up
Unable to express one's emotions or feelings openly.
Meanings
Of emotions or feelings: held back or suppressed instead of being expressed openly.
Of a person: feeling or keeping strong emotions, such as anger or sadness, hidden rather than showing them.
Definition
When someone is "bottled up," they are keeping strong emotions like anger, sadness, or frustration hidden inside instead of expressing them. This often happens because they feel unable or unwilling to share their true feelings with others. Over time, this can lead to increased stress or an eventual emotional outburst.
Examples
- After the argument, he felt all his anger bottled up inside him.
- She learned at a young age to keep her feelings bottled up, which made it hard to open up later in life.
- If you keep your frustration bottled up, it might eventually explode.
- The therapist encouraged her patient not to leave their anxieties bottled up.
- He regretted that he had kept his feelings bottled up for so long.
Common mistake
A common mistake is to use "bottle up" as a noun, like "She had a bottle up of emotions," instead of the correct phrase "She kept her emotions bottled up."
More adjectives
- gobsmacked Extremely surprised or shocked, often so much that you cannot speak for a moment.
- skint Skint means having no money or almost no money.
- tickety-boo If something is tickety-boo, it is working well and everything is fine.
- sorted If something is sorted, it is organized or arranged in the right order or is dealt with and resolve…