Other forms: zooms, zooming, zoomed
To zoom is to move very fast, or to make an image larger. Zoom past, zoom in on the detail, a zoom lens.
Optical zoom moves the lens and keeps the detail; digital zoom just enlarges the pixels and loses it, which is the difference worth knowing before buying anything. The word is imitative, from the sound of something rushing by.
1verbzoomTo move very fast.
“A motorbike zoomed past us on the narrow road.”
2verbimageTo make an image larger.
“She zoomed in on the photo to read the sign in the background.”
zoom is a fast movement, or an enlarging.
An imitative word, first recorded in the 1890s for a humming sound and later for rushing movement.
Built from
unknown. The verb was first attested c. 1892, as a noun in 1918 and as an interjection in 1942. Apparently related to Scots soom (“to buzz, hum”), dialectal English and soom, swoom, sweem (“to spin or twirl at high speed”). Compare also dialectal sweem (“to swoon, become dizzy or faint”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA