Where "The Full Bottle" Comes From
"The full bottle" most likely developed from 19th-century British slang "no bottle," meaning no good — itself possibly a shortening of the rhyming slang "no bottle and glass," meaning "no class."
Australians flipped the phrase into a positive: rather than meaning "no good," "the full bottle" came to mean the opposite — thoroughly knowledgeable or expert — first recorded in the 1940s.
"Ask Dave about engines, he's the full bottle on that stuff."
How Aussies Actually Use It
"The full bottle" describes someone with real expertise or inside knowledge on a subject, as in "she's the full bottle on tax law."
It's often used in the negative too — "not the full bottle" — to describe someone who isn't fully across the details of something.
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