bottle-o

English

Alternative forms

• bottlo
• bottle-oh

Etymology

From bottle +‎ -o (diminutive suffix).

Pronunciation

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈbɔdl̩əʉ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɒtələʊ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

bottle-o (plural bottle-os)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) A bottle shop.
2. (Australia, informal, obsolete) A door-to-door trader in used bottles.
   • 1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 14:

     For travellers have to carry bags, / And swagmen have to hump their swags / Like bottle-ohs or ragmen.

   • a. 1922, Henry Lawson, 1984, Leonard Cronin (editor), A Fantasy of Man: Henry Lawson Complete Works, 1901-1922, Part 2, page 546,

     Time was when my old friend, Benno the bottle-o, drew his turn-out into the shade of the big old fig-trees under the church at the top of the hill, and went back and thrashed the most notoriously brutal driver well and good.

   • 1970, Patrick White, The Vivisector, Vintage, published 1994, page 574:

     And Pa, that bottle-o, drunk once on misery.

   • 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 103:

     the bottle-oh with the cleft tongue rode his wagon wrapped tight in an old grey blanket and had his battle-oh cries blown westwards before the icy gusts of wind.

   • 2010, Kathleen M. McGinley, Out of the Daydream: Based on the Autobiography of Barry Mcginley Jones‎^[1], page 74:

     Another character was the bottle-o man. He would come around on weekends down the lane standing on a dray driven by an old horse while he cried out: “booooddle-o, any old rags and boddles? Booooddle-o”.

   • 2011, Richard Plant, Life's a Blur, unnumbered page:

     When Kate was a girl living in Albert Park, a lifetime before she met Rex, her bottle-o had some sort of motor truck. Some of us can remember the horse and cart used by the bottle-o, the milk-o, the ice-man, and especially the woodman.