BOTTLE. That lovely word for courage or gumption, most often used by sports fans and pundits in the context of someone failing because they just did not manage to go the distance and win.

You’ll often hear how someone “lost his bottle” or how “she bottled it” and while it’s a good shorthand description of a sporting person making a mess of something, it’s a very lazy term to use.

Frankly I have always detested the word, because it is usually used in a completely wrong way, and please do not confuse bottling in this sense with “bottling” in another sense. I utterly abhor the use of “bottling” to describe someone being attacked with a broken bottle – partly because it should always be described as what it is, namely assault with a deadly weapon. Bottle meaning gumption is an old term, possibly deriving from Cockney rhyming slang. “Bottle and glass” is Cockney for arse, and losing one’s bottle originally meant defecation. There have been more than a few sportspeople who have made a “bottle and glass” of themselves over the years, but did that mean they lacked courage?

For instance, did Andy Murray “bottle it” against Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final on Sunday, as some online eejits were saying? No, he absolutely did not – he kept fighting to the end and the simple truth is he was beaten by a player who was far superior on the day. Had Andy been playing the Novak that committed 100 unforced errors against Gilles Simon in the fourth round, the Scot would have been going home with the trophy. Nothing to do with bottle, and everything to do with Djokovic being the best player in the world by far.

Congratulations at this point to Andy’s brother Jamie for his doubles win, and the whole country should rejoice in the victory of Helensburgh’s Gordon Reid who won the wheelchair singles title.

It could be argued that Celtic bottled it on Sunday in their Scottish League Cup semi-final loss to Ross County at Hampden Park, but that does a huge disservice to County.

Assisted by Efe Ambrose’s pathetic attempt to stop Alex Schalk scoring, County came back from the dead and collectively played a blinder. Celtic didn’t bottle it, they were just poor by their standards and faced a fine performance from a good team.

It could be argued that losing one’s bottle is an apt description of something you often see in a boxing ring, where a fighter just gives up and metaphorically throws in the towel. The most famous example of that was Roberto Duran quitting in the eighth round of his 1980 world welterweight championship bout against Sugar Ray Leonard – having been dismantled by the great American boxer, Duran turned away saying ‘no mas’ (no more).

Yet when you consider the immense courage it takes for any person to enter a boxing ring, you can’t really blame a fighter for backing out when he knows he is going to get a thrashing.

The greatest example of Scottish sporting courage – OK, pure bottle – that I ever saw personally was in the ring when Ricky Burns had his jaw broken in the second round of his world lightweight title fight against Mexico’s Raymundo Beltran in Glasgow in September 2013. I could see from the third round onwards that Burns was seriously hurt and I suspected his jaw was fractured, so I watched incredulously as Burns fought on. Surely he has to quit, I thought, as Beltran tried to target the injury – who said professional boxers have to be chivalrous?

Burns even survived a knockdown in the eighth round and did enough in my book to only narrowly lose the contest – I had Beltran just one round ahead at the end – so the very controversial draw he was given by the judges did not entirely surprise me. Maybe they lost their bottle given the raucous Glasgow crowd around them, but I still think that Burns has never received the proper recognition for his outstanding courage that night.

The one sport where you always hear the term “bottle” used is golf. There have been many people famously dubbed as bottlers on the course over the years, but I have always found that to be an unfair description, because it is nearly always applied to golfers who contrive to lose from a winning position.

In golf such people are more commonly called “chokers” and even the greatest of golfers can sometimes choke. Phil Mickelson lost the 2006 US Open after standing on the 18th tee with a one-shot lead – yet he did not bottle it, he just went for a shot that was too risky and it cost him the title.

Greg Norman set a course record in the 1996 US Masters, but allegedly ‘choked’ on the last day and his six-shot lead became a five-stroke loss. In my book, Norman simply had an off day.

Jean Van de Velde’s performance in the 1999 Open at Carnoustie is often held up as the greatest example of bottling. It wasn’t – he was just inexperienced at that level and should have played for safety.

Paul Lawrie then went on to win that Open, and he should have won another title at the weekend after leading the Qatar Masters for the first three days. The pressure may have got to the Aberdonian, but more correctly the conditions had changed and he lost the advantage that playing in strong winds had given him. He finished tied for 13th. I would not bet against him making the Ryder Cup team at the age of 47, for he has the bottle.

Damn, that word again.