1. An infant’s feeding-bottle. Now local. (Cf. SUCK-BOTTLE 1.)
1632. Sherwood, A sucking bottle, succeron.
1660. Act 12 Chas. II., c. 4. Sched. s.v. Bottles, Bottles of Wood vocat. sucking bottles the Groce … x.s.
1690. Locke, Hum. Und., IV. vii. § 9. A Child knows … that its Sucking-bottle is not the Rod.
1825. in Trans. Amer. Pediatric Soc. (1897), IX. 13. The child should be fed by means of a sucking-bottle.
b. transf. and fig.
1636. Massinger, Bashf. Lover, III. i. Octavio pours a Cordial into the month of Ascanio. Gothrio (to Hortensio). You may believe him. It is his sucking-bottle, and confirms ‘An old man’s twice a child.’
1668. H. More, Div. Dial., II. xxiv. (1713), 168. I am of that childish humour, that I do not relish any drink so well as that out of mine own usual Sucking-bottle.
† 2. A breast-pump. Obs.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. xii. 435/2. A Nipple pipe, or Sucking bottle,… haveing an hole … at one end, which is as large as to receive the nipple of a Womans brest.
† 3. A West-Indian plant (see quot.). Obs.
1750. G. Hughes, Nat. Hist. Barbados, v. 139. Bread and Cheese; or, Sucking-Bottle. This is a ligneous Wyth, with dark Iron-coloured Leaves…. The Flowers are succeeded by yellow conic capsular Pods, somewhat in Shape like a Bottle.
