Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Boom   Listen
verb
Boom  v. i.  (past & past part. boomed, pres. part. booming)  
1.
To cry with a hollow note; to make a hollow sound, as the bittern, and some insects. "At eve the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone."
2.
To make a hollow sound, as of waves or cannon. "Alarm guns booming through the night air."
3.
To rush with violence and noise, as a ship under a press of sail, before a free wind. "She comes booming down before it."
4.
To have a rapid growth in market value or in popular favor; to go on rushingly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Boom" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mizzentopmast. A2. Mizzentopgallant and royalmast. B. Mainmast. B1. Maintopmast. B2. Maintopgallant and royalmast. C. Foremast. C1. Foretopmast. C2. Foretopgallant and royalmast. D. Spanker boom. E. Spanker gaff. F. Bowsprit. G. Jib boom and flying jib boom. H. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... in the Z. P. who in former years have played horse with the startled markets of great American cities; men whose voices will boom forth in the pulpit and whisper sage councils in the professional in years to come; men whom doting parents have sent to Harvard—on whom it failed to take, except on their clothes—men who have gone down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death and crawled on hands and knees through the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... made him fast till he sent down the key of his bottle-chest to pay his footing. If he closed his eyes a moment in the watch, slash comes a bucket full o' Channel water over him; the third mate would keep him two hours on end, larnin' to rig out a sternsail boom, or grease a royal mast. He led a dog's life of it too, in the half-deck: last come, in course, has al'ays to go and fill the bread barge, scrub the planks, an' do all the dirty jobs. Them owners' 'prentices, sich as he had for messmates, is always worse to their own ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... couple of old comfortables to serve them in place of cushions, which more elaborate ice-boats carried. These were tied on the boards in a way to suit the needs of those who would soon be sprawled out under the swinging boom. ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... over it a spell 'fore I 'greed. Fin'lly, I said I'd dew it, as it warn't a hard nor a bad trade; and begun to look raound fer Mis Flint, Jr. Aunt was dreadf'l pleased; but 'mazin' pertickler as tew who was goin' tew stan' in her shoes, when she was fetched up ag'inst the etarnal boom. There was a sight er likely womenfolks raound taown; but aunt she set her foot daown that Mis Flint must be smart, pious, an' good-natered; harnsome she didn't say nothin' abaout, bein' the humliest woman in the State ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... lords and Commons, Toronto, 1903. During the great boom of the early 1880'S in the range business, Craig promoted a cattle company in London and then managed a ranch in western Canada. His book is good on mismanaged range business and it is good on people, especially lords, and the land. He attributes to De Quincey a Latin quotation that properly, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... a volley and, after the first, since I was listening for it, I heard faintly before each volley the deep boom of thousands of powerful bows, twanging all at the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... she called it, was dimly lighted with a paraffin lamp, and was very damp and chilly, but it was good to be there in this hiding-place, for at regular intervals she could hear the terrible buzzing noises of a shell, like some gigantic hornet, followed by its exploding boom; and then, more awful still, the crash of a neighbouring house falling ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... the worst, Watkins; get the trysail up on deck. When you are ready we will bring her up into the wind and set it. That's the comfort of a yawl, Jack; one can always lie to without any bother, and one hasn't got such a tremendous boom to handle." ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... St Vincent, Rodney, Watt, Arkwright, Stephenson, Milton, Shakspeare, Scott;—but leave heathen mythology and diabolic geography alone. As night began to close, the sights and sounds grew more strange and awful. A great flaming eye made its appearance at a distance; the gradual boom of its approach grew louder and louder, and its look became redder and redder; and then we watched it roll off into the darkness again, on the other side of the station, on its way to Bath—till, tearing up at the rate of forty miles an hour, came another red-eyed monster, breathing horrible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... he eased off the main-sheet a little. "If we're hailed, you'll have to tell 'em, Paul—I mean Mr Gerrard—beg pardon—that we're bound for Cherbourg, and don't like to lose the breeze. It's coming pretty strongish, and if I could but find a squaresail, for I sees there's a squaresail boom, we'd make the ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... the housetops to give battle. The German sailed over the Tour Eiffel and dropped a bomb. We caught sight of it, a tiny speck floating downwards. After waiting what seemed an unreasonably long time, we heard the faint, muffled "boom" of its explosion. All this time, guns in various parts of the city were shooting at the aeroplane; it sounded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. There are anti-aircraft guns on the different platforms of the Tour Eiffel. These seemed to be rapid-fire guns ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... long ride of the scout is at last doing its work for the nation. On they come like the rushing wind, filling the air with their shouting. The rescued eleven hundred take up the strain, and then, above the swift pursuit, above the lessening conflict, above the last boom of the wheeling cannon, goes up the wild huzza of Victory. The gallant Garfield has won the day, and rolled back the disastrous tide which has been sweeping on ever since Big Bethel. In ten days Thomas routs Zollicoffer, and then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... harmonies and novel effects, in strange accord with truth of expression, mark all the other songs, particularly the "Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment as delicately tinted as summer clouds. Especially noble is "The Sea," which has all the boom and roll ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second storey of the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the windows were wide open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking. He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect, when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidrigailov, sitting at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth. Raskolnikov was dreadfully taken ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... by the Rajah in the prosperity of the natives, and the paternal character of his government, are well illustrated by a recently issued order. It is within the memory of all that in the years 1910 and 1911 occurred the great rubber "boom" in the markets of Europe. With the hope of vast profits, speculators hurried to every region where rubber was known to grow. The seeds of the Para rubber-plant had been introduced to Sarawak many years before; the suitability of the soil and climate for the production of the best quality of Para ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a "wad." Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a two and a half per cent. city property tax, and a city council that showed a propensity for traveling the back streets ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... of footsteps, the harsh chitch-chitch of feet against the rock. "He's up that way," he heard a deep voice boom. ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... "'The jib-boom, too, went with the crash and the nasty mess of timber and shrouds, floatin' to leeward, began to hammer at our hull in an ugly fashion. A couple of us got at the wreckage as best we could, but before we had cut it adrift, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... Nathaniel Boom deposed: he knew deceased, and intended to institute a prosecution against him ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... open revolt. The inhabitants rose in rebellion against their Austrian masters. The Austrians, holding the gates of the city, remained at first pretty quiet in the citadel; only, from time to time, the boom of a great cannon swept sullenly over the town. But, if they expected the disturbance to die away, and spend itself in a few hours' fury, they were mistaken. In a day or two, the rioters held possession of the principal municipal buildings. Then the Austrians poured forth in bright flaming ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... taking his aim, and preparing to draw the trigger, I turned round my back, not being able to stand it, and brizzed the flats of my hands with all my pith against the opening of my ears; nevertheless, I heard a faint boom; so, heeling round, I observed the miserable bleeding creature lift her head, and pulling up her legs, give them a plunge down again on the divots: after which she lay still, and we all saw, to our satisfaction, that death had ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... the wave burst right over the wall, roared on up to the garden, 150 yards above highwater mark, and swept his house clean away! By good fortune the wall stood the shock, and the schooner stuck fast just before reachin' it, but so near that the end of the jib-boom passed right over the place where the household lay holdin' on for dear life and half drowned. It was a tremendous night," concluded the captain, "an' nearly everything on the islands was wrecked, but they've survived ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the proper width of streets, and when in the course of time the municipality took over Regina it paved but two-thirds of Stonewall avenue, leaving a muddy morass at each side. The buildings that lined this thoroughfare were something between those of a city slum and those of a Western boom town. They had no difficulty in picking out Beechurst street; the big stone church in its muddy ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... the time as you did last summer, when you went blackberrying and came home at ten o'clock in the morning and thought it was six at night. Hard-a-lee!" as the boom swung around and they changed their course. Hilda, not realizing what this meant, did not duck her head in time, and consequently got a smart rap. Her hat was knocked off, but, being Hilda's, it did not go in the water. She never had ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... large size" ... "A-hoom—hoom, a-hoom—hoom" (that Impromptu of Schubert's), and with the notes Barbara was writing: "Mrs. Waddington has pleasure in enclosing...." Fanny Waddington would always have pleasure in enclosing something.... "A ho-om—boom, hoom, hee." A sound so light that it hardly stirred the quiet of the room. If a butterfly could hum it ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... evidences of the coming catastrophe to the observer than had been apparent when on deck last: one was the roar and hiss of escaping steam from the boilers, issuing out of a large steam pipe reaching high up one of the funnels: a harsh, deafening boom that made conversation difficult and no doubt increased the apprehension of some people merely because of the volume of noise: if one imagines twenty locomotives blowing off steam in a low key it would give some idea of the unpleasant sound that met us as ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... seamanlike manner. And presently it became a habit with The Laird to watch night and morning, for the little pin-prick of color to flutter forth from the house on the Sawdust Pile, and if his own colors did not break forth on the instant and the little cannon boom from the cliff, he was ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... Hecla then sold at 256, and later as high as 900, while Boston & Montana, then 50, mounted to 520. On the other hand, the stock of which he had sold me $50,000 worth returned at the end of the year but a mere fraction of that amount, and was one of the worst failures of the industrial boom period. It cost John Moore not only an enormous amount of money, but also prestige, and its miscarriage was one of the few bad disappointments of his brilliant career. Afterward, when "Coppers" were the rage and all Wall Street was ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... intense expectancy, David K. Cartter sprang upon his chair and reported a change of four Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln. There was a moment's pause,—a teller waved his tally-sheet towards the skylight and shouted a name,—and then the boom of a cannon on the roof of the wigwam announced the nomination to the crowds in the streets, where shouts and salutes took up and spread the news. In the convention the Lincoln river now became an inundation. Amid the wildest hurrahs, delegation ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... remembered that Young, Rigdon, Orson Pratt, and many others of the leading men of the church were absent at this time, most of them working up Smith's presidential "boom." Orson Pratt, who was then in New Hampshire, said afterward, "If the Twelve had been here, we would not ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... was left fast to a swinging boom, and soon after was employed to take ashore Lieutenant Cantor, who had received shore leave ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock

... ticking of a clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating down out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more diminutively impressive. One passed it on the way to the works, and often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were the two voices to which the brain of this ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... A deep low boom rolls suddenly across the court, the rich tone of some temple bell telling the twelfth hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends, like the wonder of some dream broken by a sound; the chanting ceases; the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, and chatting, and softly-voweled callings of flower-names ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... for slack and walked around her, taking note of her rig. She had three masts, and three tops very much like the fighting tops of our modern battleships. There were no royal masts, but she had two sprit-sail yards under the bowsprit and jib boom, and a huge lateen yard on the mizzen that took the place of the cro'-jack. But her poop deck was a wonder; five tiers of windows one above the other, and on top three big lanterns much like the ordinary street lamp. Of course, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... from subsequently viewing the position. A narrow river with two forts mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns (and defended by from 500 to 1000 fighting men), protected by a strong and well-contrived boom, was the position of the enemy. Our boats took the bull by the horns, and indeed had little other choice; cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced, and carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... companion doors, accompanied by muffled ejaculations of anger. To this, however, we paid not the slightest heed; we knew that our prisoners were safe for a time at least, so as soon as we had set the mainsail to our satisfaction I skimmed out on the jib-boom and cast loose the jib, then slipped inboard again and helped Smellie to hoist it. This done, by Smellie's order I went aft to the wheel, whilst he, armed with the cook's axe, cut the hawsers fore and aft by which the schooner was secured ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... mastered my lethargy. After I got on deck, as you may imagine, it was about as difficult, or rather more so, to overcome the vis inertiae which fixed me there. So a bed was made for me under the awning. I remained on deck for four nights; the fourth, in a cot slung up to the boom, and though I slept little, it was cool. Last night I came down to the cabin again. I have taken the turn, and am on the mend, though I do not yet feel the least inclination for food, and my nerves are so shaky that I can hardly write. That little ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... said the captain. 'Give me the wheel, White Man, and you stand by the mainsheet. Boom tackle, Mr Hay, please, and then you can jump ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... ran sheer from stem to stern; her bows swelled to meet the seas in a gentle curve that hinted the swift lines of our clippers of more recent years. From mainmast heel to truck, from ensign halyard to tip of flying jib-boom, her well-proportioned masts and spars and taut rigging stood up so trimly in one splendidly cooerdinating structure, that the veriest lubber must have acknowledged her the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... was mightily pleased with himself and with the bit of the world about him, for there lay his winter's cut of logs in the river below him snug and secure and held tight by a boom across the mouth, just where it flowed into the Nation. In a few days he would have his crib made, and his outfit ready to start for the Ottawa mills. He was sure to be ahead of the big timber rafts that took up so much space, and whose crews with unbearable ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... to silence her, and while the dark eyes were still widening with surprise, a dull boom came rolling along the wind over ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... a small fortune on the last fracas. You were one of the very few investors in the whole country who expected Vacuum Tube Transport to boom, rather than go bankrupt. You simply don't need to risk your life ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... there was not a sound to be heard but the distant boom of the breakers on the barrier reef, the beating of his heart, and the growling of the dog. Once only came a shrill chizzling chirping, evidently made by some kind of cricket, otherwise there was the stillness of a torrid day when the very ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... and insensible clay! Thou beggar corpse! Stripp'd, 'midst a butcher'd score, or so, of men, Upon a bleak hill-side, beneath the rack Of flying clouds torn by the cannon's boom, If the red, trampled grass were all thy shroud, The scowl of Heaven thy plumed canopy, Thou might'st be any one! How is it with thee? Man! Charles Stuart! King! See, the white, heavy, overhanging lids ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... other, with the men at their backs, now made a clear path, strewing the decks with the bodies of those who attempted to oppose them. The remainder of the enemy fled; some leaped down the hatchways, others took shelter on the bowsprit and jib-boom, and the more nimble sprang up the shrouds, where, as my father declared, like so many monkeys, they hung ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... extravagant forecast of future greatness. Town lots sold in a most remarkable manner, many valuable corners increasing in value ten and twenty-fold in a single night. The era of railroad building was coincident with the town boom craze, and Eastern people were so anxious to obtain a share of the enormous profits to be made by speculating in Kansas town lots, that money was telegraphed to agents and banks all over the State, and options on real estate were sold very much on the plan adopted by traders in stocks ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... look at Stanton and he kept moving down the steps; he was walking faster now, and he drew Allie behind him. The first of that stunned group to awake to action was the giant Fresno, as, with blind, unreasoning passion, he attempted to draw upon the cowboy. The boom of Larry's big gun and the crash of Fresno as he fell woke the spellbound crowd into an uproar. Screaming women and shouting men rushed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... too!" answered Rimrock, raising his voice to a defiant boom. "Here he comes now, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... ever stop to think of the tremendous moral lesson in the Bible tale of David and Goliath? And how great, human issues are often decided one way or the other by little things? Not all crises are passed in the clashing of swords and the boom of cannon. It was a pebble the size of your thumbend, remember, ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... insufferably hot by the boilers that were set in the middle of it. There was one flush deck, with an awning stretched above it that extended nearly to the prow of the boat. It was said our passenger list numbered fourteen hundred. The gold boom in California was still at fever heat. Every craft that set sail for the Isthmus by the Nicaragua or Panama route, or by the weary route around Cape Horn, was packed full of gold-seekers. It was the Golden Age of the Argonauts; and, if my memory serves me well, there were no reserved ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... the same time there was a great boom from within the car. The side bulged out—a section of the top lifted and fell back with a crash—and Silent ran back into the smoke. Haines, Purvis, and Kilduff were instantly at the car, taking the ponderous little canvas sacks of coin as ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... tell how things are, without telling how they came about. I should have no title to bring them before this tribunal, if it were not for an occasional glimpse at the past; if it were not for a strongly marked and personal philosophy of American history which looms behind the Boss and the Boom, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... The clumsy boom swung across as we changed our course, and the water ran from us in smooth reaches on either side: the bird ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... fine rich voice came to her from a long way off. Let him boom as loudly as he pleased, he could not touch her any more. She had escaped, and for ever. She saw, then, Morris as she had seen him at that tea-party months ago. She recovered that strange sense that she had had (and that he had had too, as she knew) of being carried out ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... where he was. The noises from the square below—the clink of the donkey's hoofs upon the pavement as they struggled up the steep alley laden with charcoal; the screams of children—the clamor of women's voices moving to and fro with their wooden shoes—and the boom of the church-bells sounding overhead for morning mass—came to him as ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... and the flashes of lightning that illumined the dense darkness revealed masses of thick clouds lowering over the island. In the distance we heard the boom of the distress-gun. We quickened our pace without saying a word, not daring to communicate our anxiety to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... breaking! Gray lay the still sea; Naked hillside and lea; And gray with night frost The wide garden I crossed! But the hyacinth beds were a-bloom. I stooped and plucked one— In an instant 'twas done,— And I heard, not far off, a gun boom! In my bosom I thrust the crushed blossom; And turned, and looked back Where She stood at her pane Waving sadly farewell once again; Then down the dim track Fled amain, With the flower in my bosom. Oh, the scent of the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Viequez, and Culebra, all small islands in Porto Rican waters. But the question was raised and was vigorously discussed. An official map was issued showing the island as American territory. Americans jumped in, bought up large tracts, and started a lively real estate boom. They advertised it widely as American territory, and many put their little collections of dollars into it. The claim of Spanish cession was afterward denied in the very document that served to keep the issue alive for a number of years. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... the Eagle's toes. Make the Eagle scream. Get into an argument with it about something—anything. Tell Lazette that as a town it's forty miles behind Dry Bottom. That will stir up public spirit and boom our subscription list. You see, Potter, civic pride is a big asset to a newspaper. We'll start a row right off the reel. Furthermore, we're going to have some telegraph news. I'll ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Vice-Presidency, and throughout the spring, until the meeting of the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, on June 21st, he clung to that determination. Platt, anxious lest Roosevelt should be reelected Governor against the plans of the Machine, quietly—worked up a "boom" for Roosevelt's nomination as Vice-President; and he connived with Quay to steer the Pennsylvania delegation in the same direction. The delegates met and renominated McKinley as a matter of course. Then, with irresistible pressure, they ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Quickly a boom was swung out overside. From it hung several pulleys to which was attached a narrow steel platform. Presently three tall Negroes carried out of the storeroom grotesque-looking diving suits which weighed over two ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... Extraordinary celerity, indeed, marked all these operations. Allectus was on his guard, with one squadron at Boulogne to sweep the coast of Gaul, and another cruising in the Channel. By a sudden dash Constantius [in A.D. 296] seized the mouth of Boulogne harbour, threw a boom across it, "defixis in aditu trabibus," and effectually barred the pirates from access to the sea.[327] Meanwhile the fleet which he had been building simultaneously in various Gallic ports was able to ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... in a veritable pang of sympathy, and clapped hands to her ears, to shut out Mr. Barmby's boom of the terrific word attacking Louise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me by hundreds—big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glistening swelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings—humming their perpetual rich mellow boom. (Is there not a hint in it for a musical composition, of which it should be the back-ground? some bumble-bee symphony?) How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, the rye-fields, the apple orchards. The ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... fire from more than four or five of her guns. The fog became more opaque than ever; the two ships had neared each other considerably, or it would have been impossible to distinguish. All that they could see from the deck of the Portsmouth was the jib-boom and cap of the bowsprit of the Frenchman, the rest of her bowsprit, and her whole hull, were lost in the impenetrable gloom; but that was sufficient for the men to direct their guns, and the fire from the Portsmouth was most rapid, although the extent of its execution ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... Into the rattle, the boom, the explosion of artillery there leaped suddenly a new tone. It rose clearly above the rest of the din, which had almost ceased to penetrate the consciousness. It approached with such a shrill sound, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... rigging, and made a few very general observations upon the nature of deadeyes and spanker-booms. The captain, however, promptly annihilated me by demanding categorically whether I had ever seen the spanker-boom jammed with the foretopsailyard, with the wind abeam. I replied meekly that I believed such a catastrophe had never occurred under my immediate observation, and as he turned to Bush with a smile of commiseration for my ignorance I ground ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... AT THE BRIDGE. The Americans had stretched a boom of logs, strongly chained together, ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... took my last look at the spot where I had spent nearly sixteen months, on which I shall always look back with kindly memories. Clinging to the rough railing, and walking quickly over the floating logs, we were soon across the boom in Lake Deception, and over the first short portage to Lake Beau-Beau—or "Champagne Charlie" Lake—a beautiful sheet of water, with several pretty islands, along whose southern shore the Canada Pacific Railway ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... you bring me to cultivate?" continued the maestro. "This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean earthquake? Boom! boo-o-om! ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... set for four-twenty, and the pointer has barely reached that figure when behind us there goes up a mighty flare, and simultaneously all along the line ten miles to north and south of us, other flares light up the countryside. At the same instant there breaks out the boom of our heavy guns, the sharp staccato of sixty-pounders, the dull roar of howitzers, and the ear-splitting clamour of whizz-bangs—a bedlam of noise. Shells whistle and whine overhead; they cannot be distinguished ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... weatherin' a headland, away goes the sheet o' the jib, jib's blowed to ribbons, an' afore ye know where ye are, 'breakers on the lee bow!' is the cry. Another gust, an' the rotten foretops'l's blow'd away, carryin' the fore-topmast by the board, which, of course, takes the jib-boom along with it, if it an't gone before. Then it's 'stand by to let go the anchor.' 'Let go!' 'Ay, ay, sir.' Down it goes, an' the 'Coffin's' brought up sharp; not a moment too soon, mayhap, for ten to one but you see an' hear the breakers, roarin' like mad, thirty yards or so astern. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... he knew and loved he heard—the sigh of the wind in the pines, the mourn of the wolf, the cry of the laughing-gull, the murmur of running brooks, the song of a child, the whisper of a woman. And there were the boom of the surf, the roar of the north wind in the forest, the roll of thunder. And there were the sounds not of earth—a river of the universe rolling the planets, engulfing the stars, pouring the sea of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... appear, then I know spring is at hand. Her first birds—the bluebird, the song sparrow, the robin, the red-shouldered starling—are here or soon will be. The crows have a more confident caw, the sap begins to start in the sugar maple, the tiny boom of the first bee is heard, the downy woodpecker begins his resonant tat, tat, tat, on the dry limbs, and the cattle in the barnyard low long and loud with wistful ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... hills, we caught sight of the basin of black water, and the cottages, snuggled by the white water-side—we were amazed to discover a schooner lying at anchor off my father's wharf: the wreck of a craft, her topmast hanging, her cabin stove in, her jib-boom broke off short. But this amazement—this vast astonishment—was poor surprise as compared with the shock I got when I entered my father's house. For, there—new groomed and placid—sat the doctor; and my dear sister was close to him—oh, so joyfully close to him—her hand in his, her sweet ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... Suddenly a dull boom was heard from somewhere, the exact direction could not be located. The next thing was a shrill whistle overhead, and then a most startling report. The first Spanish shell exploded about twenty feet above the surface of the ground, and about twenty yards in rear ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... act and save myself. I was on the summit of one swell when the schooner came stooping over the next. The bowsprit was over my head. I sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under water. With one hand I caught the jib-boom, while my foot was lodged between the stay and the brace; and as I still clung there panting a dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the coracle, and that I was left without retreat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... hour later he passed through the Richmond Gate and found the open spaces of the Park deserted, as they always were. The oaks and bracken rustled in a gentle breeze. The swishing of his boots through the wet grass was the only sound he heard, for the boom and purr of distant London reached him more as touch than as something audible. Seated on a fallen tree, he watched the stars and listened to the wind. That hum and boom of the city seemed underground, the flare it tossed into the sky rose from vast ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... a fiddle. I loved as my life any musician whatever—no matter what instrument he played. If there was a wedding anywhere in the town, I was the first to run forward and welcome the musicians. I loved to steal over to the bass, and draw my fingers across one of the strings—Boom! And I flew away. Boom! And I flew away. For this same "boom" I once got it hot from Berel Bass. Berel Bass—a cross Jew with a flattened out nose, and a sharp glance—pretended not to see me stealing over to the bass. And when I stretched out ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... Brennan found his man in Frank Manison, a rising figure in the office of the District Attorney. Manison had gubernatorial ambitions, and he was politically sharp. He personally conducted only those cases that would give him ironclad publicity; he preferred to lower the boom on a lighter charge than chance an acquittal. Manison also had a fine feeling for anticipating public trends, a sense of the drama, and an understanding of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... stretched a boom across the Holston River to catch scows and flats as they floated down. On these, by previous arrangements with the loyal people of East Tennessee, were placed flour and corn, with forage and provisions generally, and were thus secured for the use of the Union troops. They ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... sometimes. The gardener would go out and straighten the trampled flowers. The carts of wounded would pass regularly, stopping occasionally for water or tea. They would say the fighting had passed on. And then, suddenly, the crack and boom would approach again, shaking the house walls—the little uncurling puffs of smoke against the blue sky—the gray-blue uniformed Austrians hurrying past in retreat. No carts of wounded any more. There was too much hurry to ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity of the old road house ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... skurrying of mounted figures almost at the coach wheels, hair streaming, feathers waving, lean, red arms thrown up, the air vocal with shrill outcries—then the dull bark of a Henry, the boom of a Winchester, the sharp spitting of a Colt. The smoke rolled out in a cloud, pungent, concealing, nervous fingers pressing the triggers again and again. They could see reeling horses, men gripping their ponies' manes to keep erect, staring, frightened eyes, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... boisterous for a few seconds, and the thunder ceased. We listened breathlessly for the loud boom we had just heard, but it was not repeated. In a moment afterwards our ears were startled by the most terrifying combination of screams, shrieks, cries, and wailings I had ever heard. My blood seemed chilled in ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... environed their doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you, they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle man aboard that ship, God knows. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... happened. Itinerant venders, with their bamboo poles and baskets or buckets or boxes, pass the empty houses, and utter their accustomed cries; religious processions go by, chanting fragments of sutras; the blind shampooer blows his melancholy whistle; the private watchman makes his heavy staff boom upon the gutter-flags; the boy who sells confectionery still taps his drum, and sings a love-song with a plaintive sweet ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... Daniel Barley, Abigail Boult, John, Junr. Billings, Increase Brush, Thos., Esq. Bosworth, Nathanael Beach, David Bump, Stephen Bowdy, Nathanael Bennet, Henry Brush, Thomas, Junr. Beardsley, Nehemiah Boom, Sarah Burdick, Ephraim Brown, Joseph Burtch, Nathanael Bull, Abraham Brownell, William Barlow, David Bass, Thomas Burrett, Israel Burtch, Increase Birchard, Jonathan Beers, James Brayton, Gideon Burdick, Nathan Brady, William Bostwick, Ichabod Botheford, Joel Bowdy, Moses, Junr. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... dem cannons on dis Chickamauga Mountain, in hidin' places. I has to go with a man and wait on him and dat cannon. First thing I knows, bang, bang, boom, things has started, and guns am shootin' faster dan you can think, and I looks round for de way to run. But dem guns am shootin' down de hill in front of me and shootin' at me, and over me and on both sides ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... to your infernal nonsense," said another. "We'll have a man in there now who knows the Western ways, and who's willing to boom things along. The cork is ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... becalm her in the troughs. The solemn thundering combers caught her up from astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam level with the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and the little vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would go on running in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley between two ridges of the sea, hiding the horizon ahead and astern. There was such fascination in her pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing seaworthiness, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... another smaller one to Potosi, a little village four or five miles to the northward of Rivas, bearing orders to Captain Finney's rangers, who had gone to scout in that direction. The rest of us ate supper, and then lay listening for the boom of the little field-piece, which should tell us that the rifles had met the enemy. But the extraordinary toils and watchings of the last fortnight were too overpowering, and we were all soon buried in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... have your own man in it, in other words," Waymarsh said, "you'll marry—you personally—more money. She's already rich, as I understand you, but she'll be richer still if the business can be made to boom on certain lines that you've ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... ready to drop at night, gradually Cameron grew stolid. It seemed sometimes as if he had always been here, splashing along in the mud, soaked with rain, sleeping in muck at night, never quite dry, never free from cold and discomfort, never quite clean, always training, the boom of the battle afar, but never getting there. Where was the front? Why didn't they get there and fight and ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... passed away when he might, and often did, have to refit his vessel in scenes far distant from any help other than his own, and without any resources save those which his ready wit could adapt from materials meant for quite different uses. How to make a jib-boom do the work of a topsail-yard, or to utilize spare spars in rigging a jury-rudder, were specimens of the problems then presented to the aspiring seaman. It was somewhere in the thirties, not so very long before ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... found a place where they could leave the trail, though going down a dangerous slope, and take to the forest. As carefully as possible they descended this, the rain continuing to fall, the wind to blow, the lightning to sizzle all about them and the thunder to boom in their ears. ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... allowing his powerful voice to boom to its full compass—"if I can succeed in bringing this coward, this unmanly dallier in a sentiment which the healthy mind of boyhood rejects as premature, to a sense of his detestable conduct; if I can score the lesson upon his flesh so ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... the collection of materials and the distribution of manufactures, and for pleasure travel and the affairs of state; but the roads that had been built to invest capital, or parallel other roads, or 'make work,' as it was called, or to develop resources, or boom localities, were suffered to fall into ruin; the rails were stripped from the landscape, which they had bound as with shackles, and the road-beds became highways for the use of kindly neighborhoods, or nature recovered them wholly and hid the memory of ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... sneaks a corporal's breeks and a belt of pipeclayed hide, And splices them on to the jibsail-boom like a troopship ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... damage, the Mikawa charged right into the narrow channel at top speed. At this point she came into violent collision with something that afterward proved to be a 'boom,' constructed of stout balks of timber, steel hawsers, and ponderous chain cables, all strongly lashed together and stretched right athwart the channel, from shore to shore. But she was of nearly two thousand tons measurement, and, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... learnt to recognize the voice of every fort of Antwerp. They said to each other: "That is Lizele, Wavre Ste. Catherine, Waelhem." One after the other the Belgian guns were silenced, first Wavre, then Waelhem ... and the vibrating boom of the German heavies was heard louder than ever. The listening Bruxellois grew paler, straining every nerve to catch the voice of Antwerp. It was as if their own life as a nation was slowly dying away, as if they were mourning their own agony. But still the valiant ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... the searchlit sea. Hunters and hunted raced, turned, and twisted without a moment's pause. "We couldn't tell what was happening," said the commander of a dashing destroyer. "Every now and then out of the silence would come Bang! bang!! boom!!! as hard as it could for ten minutes on end. The flash of the guns lit up the whole sky for miles and miles, and the noise was far more penetrating than by day. Then you would see a great burst of flame from some poor devil, as the searchlights switched ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... reflected credit on the genius of Mr. Labram, who had planned it. Long Cecil (as it was called), in all its pristine perfection, was submitted to the public gaze, and was at once the cynosure of all eyes. On Friday it was tested, with complete success. The boom, at close quarters, was loud and alarming; and it required the despatch of a second shell to satisfy non-spectators that the gun had not been blown to pieces by the first. A few missiles were sent into the Intermediate Station, a couple of miles distant. Whether anyone was hurt ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... west end of Lake Superior there is a string of towns which stretches along the shore for miles under one name or another, all waiting for the boom to strike and make the northern Chicago. You cannot visit Duluth or Superior without feeling that at any moment the tide of trade will rise and designate the point where the future metropolis of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... is because of these two facts Sartor Resartus has taken so prominent a place in our literature. It stands for a kind of conscience behind the manifold modern life of our day. Beneath the shrieks and the laughter of the time we hear in it the boom of great breakers. Never again can we forget, amidst the gaieties of any island paradise, the solemn ocean that surrounds it. Carlyle's teaching sounds and recurs again and again like the Pilgrims' March in Tannhaeuser breaking through the overture, and rivalling ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... almost inaccessible character. Opposite Ticonderoga, they had fortified a high conical hill, Mount Independence, and connected it with the fort by a very strong bridge, which was itself protected by a massy boom. The Americans had been employed for ten months, in giving to these works the utmost possible ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... currency unit in June 1993; prices were relatively stable from 1995 through 1997, but inflationary pressures resurged in 1998. Reliable statistics continue to be hard to come by, and the GDP estimate is extremely rough. The economic boom anticipated by the government after the suspension of UN sanctions in December 1995 has failed to materialize. Government mismanagement of the economy is largely to blame, but the damage to Yugoslavia's infrastructure and industry by the NATO bombing during the war in Kosovo have added to ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... as not by his elbows and hands. For me it was harder work than for the active redshanks. As for Ludar, he stood at the bottom, while I, with half the troop growling at my back, was stuck midway. Yet we all reached the bottom in time; and as we did so, the boom of a gun from the rocks above us told that our men were already before the castle knocking ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... produced in England by the News from Ireland Actions of the Enniskilleners Distress of Londonderry Expedition under Kirke arrives in Loch Foyle Cruelty of Rosen The Famine in Londonderry extreme Attack on the Boom The Siege of Londonderry raised Operations against the Enniskilleners Battle of Newton ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... world's history the tragic truth that the accumulated consequences of a nation's sins fall on the heads of a single generation. Slowly, drop by drop, the cup is filled. Slowly, moment by moment, the hand moves round the dial, and then come the crash and boom of the hammer on the deep-toned bell. Good men should pray not, 'Put up thyself into thy scabbard,' but, 'Gird Thy sword on Thy thigh, O thou most mighty... on behalf of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... And when the boom went up the barge's mast, and the tightly corded roll of dark canvas began to struggle for liberty, and writhe and flap with throttling noises above our heads, and when Mr. Rowe wrestled with it and the driver helped him, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... big guns—and so liable to reach the scene after the fighting is over? Who when worsted has not fought many a battle through again merely to show how different the result would have been, if his artillery had only arrived in time! Boom! boom! boom! Where are the enemy now? And who does not take pride in his navy, sweeping the high seas of the imagination but too often departed for some foreign port when the coast defences ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... Finch). "Enter to him Bernardo" (Mr. Finch). "Who's there?" "Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself." (Mrs. Finch unfolds herself—she suckles the baby, and tries to look as if she was having an intellectual treat.) "Francisco and Bernardo converse in bass—Boom-boom-boom. Enter Horatio and Marcellus" (Mr. Finch and Mr. Finch.) "Stand! Who's there?" "Friends to this ground." "And liegemen to the Dane." (Madame Pratolungo begins to feel the elocutionary exposition of Shakespeare, where she always feels it, in her ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... "The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the smaller buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations, such as western bears, would increase ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... at Elreno was a wooden building, hastily constructed in the feverish days of the early boom, with many weak points and few ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... twenty leagues behind us. And now, to make the ship as stiff as possible, I knocked down our after bulk-head, and got two of the boats under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... rhythmic song of welcome to him. Fireflies were in the grass. A whippoorwill in the deep of the wood was calling weirdly, and an occasional night hawk, flying high, gave his grating shriek, or hollow boom, suggestive and resounding. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... made money, heaps of it. Manning married, but lost his wife when Sylvia came into the world. That broke him up; he drank himself to death, leaving his partner as trustee and guardian for the infant. There was a boom in tea estates; my father sold on the crest of the wave and came to London. He progressed, but Mrs. Fenley—didn't. She was just a Tommy's daughter, and never seemed to try and rise above ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... pines. During the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did not camp under the pines. Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but for Ellen the dazzling white streaks or the tremendous splitting, crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along the battlements of the Rim had no terrors. A storm eased her breast. Deep in her heart was a hidden gathering storm. And somehow, to be out when the elements were warring, when the earth trembled and the heavens seemed to burst ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... camp goods. Hundreds of Klondike exploring companies were being organized. In imagination each shop-keeper saw the gold seekers of the world in line of march, their faces set toward Seattle and the Sound. Every sign indicated a boom. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland



Words linked to "Boom" :   occurrence, kaffir boom, baby boom, happening, gold rush, roaring, prosperity, manna from heaven, pole, spar, natural event, windfall, bonanza, go, boom box, luxuriate, blast, bunce, expand, roar, smash



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com