boomer

plural boomers

1. Something that makes a booming sound.

   That's when the Rev let loose one of those great big boomers of a laugh. It was so loud in the closed space, the effect was what Wes imagined it felt like to hear a bullet fired in a car.

   2010, Pearl Cleage, Till You Hear from Me, page 151

2. A device used to bind or tighten chain.

   Synonyms: chain binder

3. USinformalgovernmentA nuclear ballistic missile submarine, SSBN.

   Movements of the 14 boomers in the US Navy’s fleet are usually closely guarded secrets.

   2026 January 17, Brad Lendon, “One of the US Navy’s most powerful weapons makes a rare appearance in Guam”, in CNN, archived from the original on 03 Mar 2026

   3 more examples

   Distant contact, probably submerged. It's a wild guess, but I'd say we hit a boomer coming out of the barn. Could be a missile boat out of Polijarny.

   1990, Larry Ferguson, Donald E. Stewart, The Hunt For Red October

   The Ohio-class Replacement Program boats (ORP, formerly known as SSBN(X)) of 560 feet about the same length as the Ohio-class (SSBN-726) but with eight fewer missile tubes than the service’s current boomers, […]

   2014 April 7, Sam Lagrone, quoting David Johnson, “Navy Has Finalized Specifications for New Ohio-Replacement Boomer”, in USNI, archived from the original on 14 Jun 2025

   If lawmakers approve the proposal without adding more money and more ships, the Navy will buy one Virginia plus a Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, a guided-missile frigate, an amphibious landing dock and two salvage-and-rescue vessels. The Columbia-class boomer with its $14-billion price tag heavily weighs on the 2021 budget.

   2020 February 19, David Axe, “The U.S. Navy’s Submarine Force Is Shrinking Fast (And Trump Just Made It Worse)”, in The National Interest, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2025

4. UKA Eurasian bittern (subfamily Botaurinae spp.).
5. An adult male kangaroo.
6. AppalachiaA red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus).
7. A sewellel (Aplodontia rufa).

   Synonyms: mountain beaver, chehalis

8. gamesIn realtime strategy games, a player who prioritises economic development and securing resources (and therefore future production) over offence or defence.

   Economically speaking, the attacker loses every time. So it's a war of the boomers.

   2000 August 28, Ghost, “Request for opinion: curious about the massive villager concept”, in alt.games.microsoft.age-of-kings (Usenet)

   3 more examples

   you and i both know that there are some boomers out there who'll consistently hit bronze @ 16ish and assuming they have protected themselves correctly, are some tough players.

   1999 August 19, polo@zTech, “Keep on getting beaten!”, in microsoft.public.ageofempires (Usenet)

   2008 June 12, Kresten Toftgaard Andersen, Anders Buch, Dennis Dahl Christensen & Dung Tran, "Reinforcement Learning in RTS games" (master thesis), page 51. The strategy of the rusher is to build a small army very fast in order to destroy the enemy early in the game, whereas the aggressive/boomer builds a larger army, which is not necessarily an advanced army, to attack the enemy.

   2008 July 13-15, Jin Park, Du Zhang & Meiliu Lu, "An intelligent agent for the game of Age of Mythology: the Titans", 2008 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, page 93. Once the Heroic Age is reached, the boomer is able to generate a superior army at an explosive rate due to the advanced economy.

9. UShistoricalAlternative letter-case form of Boomer (“Oklahoma settler”).
10. USA transient worker who would move from boom town to boom town in search of temporary work.
11. A techno-optimist, in particular concerning artificial intelligence.

    The doomers and the boomers are consumed by intramural fights, but from a distance they can look like two offshoots of the same tribe: people who are convinced that A.I. is the only thing worth paying attention to.

    2024 March 18, Andrew Marantz, “О.К., Doomer”, in The New Yorker, page 50

    Antonyms: doomer

12. abbreviationaeronauticsShort for boom operator: The airman who operates the in-air flying refueling boom, to refuel aircraft in mid-air, from an air tanker.

plural boomers

1. informalA baby boomer.

   Boomers came of age in the era of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

   3 more examples

   To the many Boomers who sensed that something had gone awry in Greatest Generation America, Mad was a glimmer of truth, a benign but trenchant voice against hypocrisy and pretense, a way to laugh at parents who fretted over status symbols and authorities who talked one way but acted another.

   2007, Leonard Steinhorn, The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, New York: Macmillan, →ISBN

   These fears have been exacerbated by the recession, which forced many boomers to turn to Social Security earlier than anticipated because of long-term unemployment and financial crises (Johnson and Wilson, 2010a, b).

   2015, Melvin Delgado, Baby Boomers of Color […] , →ISBN, page 4

   Hug a Boomer/Xer/Millennial/Zoomer In case you missed it: Gen Z is mad at boomers for the state of the world; boomers are mad at Gen Z for being so dismissive; Gen X feels forgotten and yet resents even themselves; […]

   2019 December 27, Anya Strzemien, “13 Ways to Be a Better Person in 2020”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 03 Mar 2020

2. broadlyderogatoryslangsometimesAn elderly person, regardless of generation.

   I'm going to be a boomer by the time this thing is over.

   Synonyms: antiquity, codger, gadgie, gaffer, geezer, gramps, greybeard, old codger

3. broadlyderogatoryslangsometimesA person who is too old to be familiar with the use of recent technology.

   I'm such a boomer; I have no idea how to use this phone.

plural Boomers

1. A surname.

plural Boomers

1. UShistoricalA member of a 19th century movement which campaigned for the opening of "Unassigned Lands" within the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) for settlement.

   Some skunk of a Sooner, sneaking in ahead of the Run, had set the blaze to keep the Boomers off, saving the land for himself.

   1930, Edna Ferber, Cimarron, page 27

2. Alternative letter-case form of boomer (“a baby boomer”).

   Someday, Boomers hope, Millennials will build according to great ideals their parents can only envision, act on vital issues their parents can only ponder.

   1991, William Strauss, Neil Howe, “The Millennial Cycle”, in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN, part III (The Future), page 342

   2 more examples

   In a somewhat bizarre set of survey data from 2015, 33 percent of Millennials identified as Gen X, and 8 percent said that they were Boomers. Fifteen percent of Gen Xers said that they identified as Boomers, while a baffled 2 percent of Boomers and 4 percent of Silents thought of themselves as Millennials.

   2021 October 14, Joe Pinsker, “'Gen Z' Only Exists in Your Head”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 Sep 2023

   Back in the 80s he [Ben Elton] was one of the angry young things of alternative comedy, but this time he was hosting up-and-coming acts. ‘It just goes to show that Boomers and Generation Zedders can get on after all!’

   2023 May 27, Cole Moreton, Ray Burmiston, “I had to tell my kids never to Google me!: He’s just won a BAFTA and is about to star in a West End musical. Quite a turnaround, admits Ben Elton, the motormouth comic whose career went spectacularly off-key…”, in Daily Mail, page 4