boom or bust

plural booms · plural busts

1. alternativeAlternative form of boom and bust, a pattern of great prosperity followed by recession

   I don't know if it would work out that way, but I know the grocery store would “boom or bust.”

   1911, Albert Bull, Sound Business, page 142

   1 more example

   After the war, it will be boom or bust! The United States kept laissez-faire too long and it let us drift into a precarious predicament.

   1941, Blair Moody, Boom or Bust, page 317

comparative more boom or bust · superlative most boom or bust

1. alternativeAlternative form of boom-and-bust, featuring or characterized by a boom and bust cycle.

   Our industry has always been a “boom or bust” industry, with a plus or minus 5% swing being the difference between boom and bust.

   1970, “Problems of Capacity, Pulping Processes, Computerization”, in American Paper Industry, volume 52, page 33

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   Perhaps it's best, then, for readers not raised in this milieu to imagine Fort Meade and its environs, if not the entire Beltway, as one enormous boom-or-bust company town.

   2019 September 17, Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, page 37