noun · neutral
bottleneck
UK/ˈbɒtəlˌnɛk/US/ˈbɑːtəlˌnɛk/BOT·tle·neck
a place or situation that causes delay because it slows down the whole process
Examples
“The single-lane bridge is a major bottleneck on our commute.”
“A lack of staff has become a bottleneck in processing applications.”
“Removing the bottleneck improved traffic flow significantly.”
Band 8 sentence
“Identifying bottlenecks in the supply chain allowed the firm to streamline production and reduce delays.”
Collocations
- major bottleneck
- traffic bottleneck
- remove a bottleneck
Word family
Common mistakes
There is a big traffic bottleneck here.→There is a big bottleneck here.
The bottleneck are serious.→The bottleneck is serious.
Say it for a higher band
5obstacle→6blockage→7+bottleneck
Synonyms
obstacle
Easily confused
obstacle
“The project faced several obstacles, but the main bottleneck was the slow approval process.”
Related words
Learn this word with the rest of its set, and get reminded at the right time.
In Transport & Traffic
Learn it with its set