bottle-o

A bottle-o is Australian slang for a bottle shop, a store that sells alcohol to take away. What Americans call a liquor store and Brits call an off-licence.

What bottle-o means

Wiktionary defines bottle-o as a bottle shop, used in Australia and New Zealand. Many are drive-throughs attached to pubs, where you can buy a carton of beer without getting out of the car. “Grabbing something from the bottle-o” is how a lot of Australian barbecues begin.

Examples

• “Can you swing by the bottle-o on the way? We’re out of beer.”
• “The bottle-o closes at nine on Sundays.”
• “I’ll grab a bottle of wine from the bottle-o for dinner.”

Where it came from

It’s bottle plus the Australian -o ending, the same pattern as servo and arvo. It’s also spelled bottlo or bottle-oh.

The word used to mean something else. Wiktionary records an older, now obsolete sense: a bottle-o was a door-to-door trader who collected and resold used bottles, often with a horse and cart. That job disappeared, and the name moved on to the shop.

Related terms

• Servo: a service station.
• Maccas: McDonald’s.
• Arvo: afternoon.
• Good on ya: well done, or thanks.

See more terms like this in our Australian slang guide.