The community–enhancing power of churches is well documented. When David Blunkett said he would like to “bottle” whatever religious schools had that drove their success, he was partly talking about what sociologists call social capital – a sense of community, trust, connections and networks.
-Hi,
In the passage above, did the author mean ‘bottle’ as [color=black]Brit slang (of a busker) to collect money from the bystanders or something else?
Thank you.
I’ve never heard that Brit slang!!
He meant he would like to be able to capture it for sale or use.
Are British slang terms and American slang terms different from each other? Is it necessary for a learner to get acquainted with all the slang terms?
Sometimes English seems so complicated =( Though i love learning English more and more but it gets very crazy sometimes , because of slang terms and a lot more =(
What should I do? I don’t want to give up! Also , I want to know how do we come to know that a person has used a slang term? Specially while watching a movie!
Some slang terms are specific to BrE, some are specific to AmE, and some are shared (and, of course, there are other regional varieties of English around the world which may have their own local slang terms).
Generally, BrE speakers are familiar with quite a lot of AmE slang that they would not use themselves because of exposure through popular culture (TV, films, pop music, etc.). I’d guess the reverse is not true to such an extent.
Like Beeesneees, I am unfamiliar with the busking-related slang meaning of “bottle”. The actual meaning here, that of “capture”, is not slang.
Thanks, Dozy for joining in, still feel a bit of puzzled, as the dictionaries I’ve paged down didn’t give anything like “capture”. So slang was the only source to rely on.
The literal meaning is “put in a bottle”. For example, you can talk of bottling wine or beer. The “capture” sense is a figurative extension of this meaning, and is most often used when talking of some precious or elusive quality that one wants to harness or preserve.
I wish I could bottle some of the childhood’s enthusiasm and energy and mix them into my morning coffee. 
Do I need the 's?
I wouldn’t use the article:
I wish I could bottle some of childhood’s enthusiasm and energy…
or
I wish I could bottle some childhood enthusiasm and energy…
Thank you very much, Bee!
Hey Dozy! Thanks a bunch! How do you tell that a term is slang? Can you answer that?
If you aren’t able to make a judgement yourself, you can look in a dictionary. All good dictionaries will mark slang words and expressions as such (though in borderline cases not everyone will necessarily agree on how to classify a word, and sometimes there can be a grey area between “slang” and “colloquial” or similar designators).