Bottleneck

Bottleneck: the narrow part of a bottle near the top.

Bottleneck: the delay in transmission of data through the circuits of a computer's microprocessor or over a TCP/IP network. The delay typically occurs when a system's bandwidth cannot support the amount of information being relayed at the speed it is being processed. There are, however, many factors that can create a bottleneck in a system.

Bottleneck: process in any part of the enterprise (office, production, sales, etc.) that limits the throughput of the whole process.

Bottleneck: both a style and a technique; mostly associated with blues guitar, it involves sliding a smooth metal, glass, or plastic bar or tube along the strings to create a "slurred" or "glissando" effect; the term originates from the days when blues musicians would use the broken neck of a bottle for the same purpose.

Bottleneck: A form of genetic drift that occurs when a population is drastically reduced in size. Some genes may be lost from the gene pool as a result of chance.