English

Alternative forms

• bottlo
• bottle-oh

Noun

bottle-o ‎(plural bottle-os)

1. (Australia, informal, obsolete) A door-to-door trader in used bottles.
   • 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.

   • 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber 2003, p. 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, 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.

2. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) A bottle shop.