Other forms: booming, booms, boomed
A boom is a stretch of time when everything grows fast and money comes easily. New cranes on the skyline, house prices climbing every month, every shop with a card in the window looking for staff.
It is the good half of a pair: boom and bust, the rise and the crash that comes after it. The word also names a deep hollow sound — the boom of thunder, of a bass drum, of a door slamming in an empty hall — and a booming voice is one you hear two rooms away. Business English uses it as a verb: sales are booming, the town is booming. A baby boom is a sudden rise in births, and a boom town is a place that grew up overnight around a mine or an oil field. Two more booms live in technical corners: the long pole along the bottom of a sail, which swings across the boat and knocks people into the water, and the arm that holds a microphone above the actors' heads.
1nounboomA period of fast growth, high activity and easy money.~87%
“The boom ended and the cranes stood still for two years.”
2nounhollowA deep, loud, hollow sound.~5%
“There was a boom of thunder somewhere behind the hills.”
3verbgrowTo grow fast and do very well.~2%
“Business has been booming since the new road opened.”
4verbdeepTo make a deep loud sound.~2%
“His voice boomed across the yard and everyone stopped.”
5nounpoleThe long pole along the bottom of a sail, which swings across the boat.~2%
“Duck when the boom comes over or it will take your head off.”
6nounmovableA long movable arm holding a microphone above the people being filmed.~2%
“The boom dipped into the shot and they filmed the scene again.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
boom is a period of growth.
Boom began as the noise itself, an imitation of a deep sound, in the way bang and hiss are. Dutch bommen, 'to hum or buzz', and German bummen are the same attempt at the same rumble. The money sense is taken to come from the idea of a rapid expansion, though other explanations have been put forward. The word for a fortune started life as a noise.
imitative of the sound, perhaps borrowed; compare German bummen, Dutch bommen (“to hum, buzz”). The sense "a period of economic growth" is generally taken to derive from the sense "a rapid expansion", although other origins have also been suggested.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA