Boomer
nounA person born during the post-war baby boom, roughly between 1946 and 1964.
How to spell boomer
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce boomer
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does boomer mean?
- nounA person born during the post-war baby boom, roughly between 1946 and 1964.
Boomer in a sentence
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As a boomer, my father bought his first house in his twenties.
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The marketing team designed the brochure to appeal to every boomer approaching retirement.
Where does boomer come from?
Language of origin: Other
The root 'boom' began life in the late 1500s as an imitative word: it mimicked the deep, resounding noise of a bittern, a bell, or distant cannon fire, and it is related to the Dutch 'bommen', meaning to hum or buzz. By the 1800s the same word had taken on a financial and commercial sense, describing a sudden surge of rapid growth, as in an economic 'boom'. The agent suffix '-er' was added to mark a person or thing connected with such a surge. The modern and dominant meaning attaches it to the post-war 'baby boom', the sharp rise in births after 1945, so that a 'boomer' is someone born during that surge. The double 'o' simply preserves the long vowel of the parent word 'boom', which keeps the spelling refreshingly free of traps.
How the word is built
- boom (imitative of a deep resounding noise, used figuratively of a sudden surge)
- -er (agent suffix: one belonging to or associated with)
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