Boom

How to spell boom

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce boom

What does boom mean?

1. nounA loud, deep, resonant sound, often prolonged.
2. nounA period of rapid economic growth or sudden increase in activity.
3. nounA long pole or spar, as on a sailing boat, microphone rig, or crane.

Boom in a sentence

• The distant boom of thunder rattled the windows.

• The housing boom pushed property prices far beyond local wages.

• The sound technician lowered the microphone boom over the actors.

• A low boom echoed across the valley after the blast.

• The postwar boom created millions of new jobs.

• The sailor ducked as the boom swung across the deck.

Where does boom come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Boom began life as an imitative word, one coined to mimic the deep, hollow noise it names; this kind of formation is called echoic or onomatopoeic. English picked it up in the late Middle Ages, and it was reinforced by the Dutch verb 'bommen', meaning 'to hum' or 'to drone', which described the same booming resonance. From the literal sound it spread outward in clever ways: a sudden roar of activity gave the sense of a rapid economic 'boom', the idea of something surging upward. The nautical and crane sense of a long projecting spar comes by a separate route, from the Dutch 'boom' meaning 'tree' or 'beam', a cousin of the English word 'beam' itself. Because the spelling simply doubles the vowel to stretch the sound, it rarely trips anyone up, though the shared form across these very different meanings can surprise.

How the word is built

• boom (imitative root, echoing a deep resonant sound)