tooth-bottle

English

Etymology

Unknown. Most likely from use as a washstand container.

Noun

tooth-bottle (plural tooth-bottles)

1. (obsolete) A small metal bottle often used to contain a small amount of alcohol.
   • 1930, Life and Letters and the London Mercury - Volume 4, page 367:

     They filled up their glasses with the red wine from the tooth-bottle and they had other little glasses of brown wine as well.

   • 1935, William Arnold Thorpe, English Glass, page 83:

     But perhaps the most interesting of these fragments in pale-green metal is the neck from a bottle, in shape and size resembling a washstand 'tooth bottle', but with a flatly everted orifice.

   • 1938, P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters:

     The tooth-bottle is at your elbow.