Boom

Pronunciation

• enPR: booÍžm, IPA: /buːm/
• Rhymes: -uːm

Onomatopoetic, perhaps borrowed; compare German bummen, Dutch bommen.

Full definition of boom

Verb

1. To make a loud, resonant sound.Thunder boomed in the distance and lightning flashes lit up the horizon.The cannon boomed, recoiled, and spewed a heavy smoke cloud.Beneath the cliff, the sea was booming on the rocks.I can hear the organ slowly booming from the chapel.
2. (transitive, figuratively, of speech) To exclaim with force, to shout, to thunder.
• Wodehouse Offing|I and XVII|I was about to reach for the marmalade, when I heard the telephone tootling out in the hall and rose to attend to it. “Bertram Wooster's residence,” I said, having connected with the instrument. “Wooster in person at this end. Oh hullo,” I added, for the voice that boomed over the wire was that of Mrs Thomas Portarlington Travers of Brinkley Court, Market Snodsbury, near Droitwich – or, putting it another way, my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia.
  ...
  “I'd give a tenner to have Aubrey Upjohn here at this moment.” “You can get him for nothing. He's in Uncle Tom's study.” Her face lit up. “He is?” Dahlia threw her head back and inflated the lungs. “UPJOHN!” she boomed, rather like someone calling the cattle home across the sands of Dee, and I issued a kindly word of warning. “Watch that blood pressure, old ancestor.”
3. (transitive) To make something boom.Men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death.
4. (slang, US, obsolete) To publicly praise.
• unknown date, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Problem of Thor Bridge
5. If you pull this off every paper in England and America will be booming you.
6. To rush with violence and noise, as a ship under a press of sail, before a free wind.
• TottenShe comes booming down before it.

Derived terms

• boom box
• sonic boom

Noun

1. A low-pitched, resonant sound, such as of an explosion.''The boom of the surf.
2. One of the calls of certain monkeys or birds.
• 1990, Mark A. Berkley, William C. Stebbins, Comparative PerceptionInterestingly, the blue monkey's boom and pyow calls are both long-distance signals (Brown, 1989), yet the two calls differ in respect to their susceptibility to habitat-induced degradation.

Interjection

1. used to suggest the sound of an explosion.

From Dutch boom ("tree, pole"). Compare English beam.

Noun

1. (nautical) A spar extending the foot of a sail; a spar rigged outboard from a ship's side to which boats are secured in harbour.
2. A movable pole used to support a microphone or camera.
3. A horizontal member of a crane or derrick, used for lifting.
4. (electronics) The longest element of a Yagi antenna, on which the other, smaller ones, are transversally mounted.
5. A floating barrier used to obstruct navigation, for military or other purposes; or used for the containment of an oil spill.
6. A wishbone shaped piece of windsurfing equipment.
7. The arm of a crane (mechanical lifting machine).
8. The section of the arm on a backhoe closest to the tractor.

Related terms

• (nautical) buoy, cathead
• crane

Verb

1. To extend, or push, with a boom or pole.to boom out a sail; to boom off a boat

Or uncertain origin; perhaps a development of Etymology 1, above.

Noun

1. (economics, business) A period of prosperity or high market activity.

Antonyms

• (period of prosperity) recession

Verb

1. (intransitive) To be prosperous.''Business was booming.
2. (transitive, dated) To cause to advance rapidly in price.to boom railroad or mining shares

Synonyms

• (to be prosperous) flourish, prosper

Derived terms

• sis boom bah
• boom town/boomtown

Anagrams

• mobo, MOBO, moob