bomb

noun \ ˈbäm \

Updated on: 12 May 2018

Definition of bomb

1 a : an explosive device fused to detonate under specified conditions

b : atomic bomb; also : nuclear weapons in general —usually used with the

2 : a vessel for compressed gases: such as

a : a pressure vessel for conducting chemical experiments

b : a container for an aerosol (such as an insecticide) : spray can

3 : a rounded mass of lava exploded from a volcano

4 : a lead-lined container for radioactive material

5 : failure, flop

the play was a bomb

6 British : a large sum of money

7 a British : a great success : hit

b slang : one that is striking or extraordinary —used with the

their new album is the bomb

8 a : a long pass in football

b : a very long shot (as in basketball)

shooting 3-point bombs

; also : home run

9 : something unexpected and unpleasant —often used with drop

dropped a bomb with her resignation

See bomb defined for English-language learners

See bomb defined for kids

Examples of bomb in a Sentence

A bomb went off downtown.
Many bombs were dropped on the city during the war.
They hid a bomb in the building.
countries that have the bomb

Recent Examples of bomb from the Web

The materials appear to show Iranian scientists conducting feasibility studies on the detonation of nuclear bombs and the mounting of warheads on Iran's largest missiles.

— author: joby warrick, Anchorage Daily News, "Muzzled watchdog: How killing the nuclear deal could make it easier for Iran to pursue the bomb in secret," 8 May 2018
At least two buildings hold reactors, one credited with making the plutonium that fueled some of North Korea’s atom bombs.

— david e. sanger and william j. broad, New York Times, "Verifying the End of a Nuclear North Korea ‘Could Make Iran Look Easy’," 6 May 2018
The rest of the top five doesn’t get any more predictable, with Manny Machado, Ozzie Albies, Matt Davidson and Charlie Blackmon rounding out the group in a four-way tie with nine bombs.

— michael beller, SI.com, "The Table Setter: Your April All-Stars Are ... Mitch Haniger and Jed Lowrie?," 30 Apr. 2018
Kush Queen is capitalizing on the internet's collective, if confusing, fascination with bath bombs.

— anna moeslein, Glamour, "I Went to a Weed Retreat for Women and Swore I'd Never Smoke Again," 20 Apr. 2018
May said the presence of helicopters and the use of barrel bombs pointed the finger of blame squarely at the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

— NBC News, "UK's Theresa May tells lawmakers: Syria strikes were legal and moral," 16 Apr. 2018
Assad has unleashed brutal, unrelenting violence, leveling his country’s cities with crude bombs dropped from helicopters as well as deliberately striking hospitals and humanitarian convoys.

— w.j. hennigan, Time, "The U.S., Britain and France Just Unleashed 105 Missiles on Syria. Now What?," 14 Apr. 2018
The city of Austin was on edge for days as a series of bombs killed two and injured four people, including Mason’s mother.

— Essence.com, "Petition Created To Give Posthumous Music Degree To Austin Bombing Victim Draylen Mason," 12 Apr. 2018
The B-1s overhead drop their full load of precision bombs on the thing.

— joe pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, "How the Pentagon Could Destroy All Monsters," 22 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'bomb.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of bomb

borrowed from Spanish or Italian bomba or French bombe, all probably in part from an onomatopoeic base bomb- (as in Greek bómbos "booming, humming," Old Norse bumba "drum," Lithuanian bambėti "to mutter, mumble," Albanian bumbullin "it is thundering"), in part back-formation from Medieval Latin bombardus or Middle French bombarde ¹bombard

Note: The origin and transmission of bomba, bombe, etc., in the sense "explosive device, projectile, etc.," among European languages is not certain. Bomba is attested earliest in Spanish, appearing several times in the second half of the 16th century (canto 18 of La Araucana of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, the Descripción general de África of Luis del Mármol, the Historia de las cosas…del Gran Reyno de la China of Juan González de Mendoza). Mendoza's book (1585) is the source of an early and aberrant instance of bomb in English: his bombas de fuego is rendered as "bomes of fire" in Robert Parke's translation (The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China, London, 1588, p. 65). Bomba is recorded as Italian in Antoine Oudin's Italian-French dictionary (Recherches italiennes et françoises, Paris, 1640), where it is glossed "bombe, ou balon de feu" ("bomb, or ball of fire"), though it is not recorded in an Italian text until 1686 (Paolo Segneri, Il cristiano instruito, Florence, p. 327); Oudin's gloss also apparently constitutes the first record in French. Significantly earlier than any of these is Latin bombus, which occurs twice in the Commentarii, an account of the exploits of the condottiere Jacopo Piccinino in 1452-53 by the Neapolitan humanist Giannantonio de' Pandone, "il Porcellio" (ca. 1405-85); Pandone's bombus appears to be some sort of exploding projectile ("Hic Tibertus Dux bombi fulmine in ulna sauciatur" - "Here Tibertus [the condottiere Tiberto Brandolini] was wounded in the forearm by the flash of a bombus"); the 18th-century lexicographer Du Cange, in Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, glosses bombus in this passage, alluding to French bombe, as pila incendiaria, "fireball." Spanish bomba in the sense "pump," attested from the early 16th century, is probably an independent formation; cf. ¹pump.

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 1662

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year

bomb Synonyms

bomb

verb

Definition of bomb

transitive verb

1 : to attack with or as if with bombs : bombard

The planes successfully bombed their target.

a bombed village

2 : to defeat decisively

3 a : to hit (a ball, puck, or shot) very hard

bomb a home run

bomb a long drive down the fairway

b : to score many runs against (a pitcher)

Allen tried a new slider pitch without success and was bombed in Cincinnati.
—Jack Lang

4 slang : to fail (a test)

I bombed my history exam.

intransitive verb

1 informal : to fall flat : to fail completely

The movie bombed at the box office.

a joke that bombed

2 informal : to move rapidly

a car bombing down the hill

—

bombing

noun

- The city was subjected to heavy bombing during the war.
- suicide bombings

See bomb defined for English-language learners

Examples of bomb in a Sentence

The city was heavily bombed during the war.
The planes flew 200 miles to bomb their target.
The movie bombed at the box office.
The play bombed on Broadway.
He bombed at his first performance.
I completely bombed my math exam.
A car was bombing down the highway.
teenagers bombing around in a convertible

Recent Examples of bomb from the Web

In fact, the building does shake multiple times a day from bombing tests.

— amy aumick, OrlandoSentinel.com, "Explore Florida's Okaloosa County: History of Air Force weapons," 7 May 2018
But Lockheed Martin thinks its Miniature Hit-to-Kill missile could stand guard at military bases, embassies, or anywhere else American forces need defending against everything from rocket attacks to mortar launches to bomb-carrying drones.

— eric adams, WIRED, "Lockheed's Drone-Sploding Baby Missile Weighs Just 5 Pounds," 5 May 2018
The filthy 'comedian' totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers [sic] weak performance).

— jennifer wright, Harper's BAZAAR, "Michelle Wolf Is a Hero," 30 Apr. 2018
The filthy 'comedian' totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance).

— abby gardner, Glamour, "Breaking Down the Outrage Cycle Around Michelle Wolf," 30 Apr. 2018
Things very much changed from the security standpoint after the hotel was bombed.

— anna silman, The Cut, "9 Rajneeshpuram Residents on What Wild Wild Country Got Wrong," 19 Apr. 2018
New revelations The children’s clinic where Asperger worked was bombed by Allied troops, and for decades many people believed the clinical records had been destroyed.

— hannah furfaro, Science | AAAS, "Pioneering autism researcher cooperated with Nazis, new evidence suggests," 19 Apr. 2018
Eight Israeli jets had been responding to an incursion by an Iranian drone launched from Syrian territory by bombing a Syrian air base, Israel said.

— ruth eglash, The Seattle Times, "Israel carries out ‘large-scale attack’ in Syria after Israeli jet crashes under anti-aircraft fire," 10 Feb. 2018
On Saturday, at least 20 civilians were killed when coalition fighter jets bombed a bus carrying commuters in western Yemen, near the city of Taiz, which has been locked in fighting for three years.

— ahmed al-haj, The Seattle Times, "Saudi-led airstrike at Yemen wedding killed at least 20," 23 Apr. 2018

Origin and Etymology of bomb

derivative of ¹bomb

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 1688

in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

See Words from the same year

bomb Synonyms

Synonyms

collapse, fail, flop, flunk, fold, founder, miss, tank, wash out;

Antonyms

click, come off, deliver, go, go over, pan out, succeed, work out;

Near Antonyms

cook, flourish, prosper, thrive;

prevail, triumph, win;

Related Words

flounder, struggle;

decline, sink, skid, slip, slump, wane;

crash, crumble, miscarry, misfire;

go under;

implode, self-destruct;

Phrases

come a cropper, come to grief, come up empty, die on the vine, fall flat, fall on one's face, fall short, lay an egg;

BOMB Defined for English Language Learners

bomb

noun

Definition of bomb for English Language Learners

: a device that is designed to explode in order to injure or kill people or to damage or destroy property
the bomb : nuclear weapons
: something that is a complete failure

bomb

verb

Definition of bomb for English Language Learners

: to attack (a place or people) with a bomb or many bombs
: to fail completely
: to fail (a test)

BOMB Defined for Kids

bomb

noun \ ˈbäm \

Definition of bomb for Students

1 : a hollow case or shell filled with explosive material

2 : a container in which something (as an insecticide) is stored under pressure and from which it is released in a fine spray

3 : something that is a complete failure

The new movie was a bomb.

bomb

verb

Definition of bomb for Students

bombed; bombing

1 : to attack with bombs

2 : to fail completely

His comedy act bombed.

Learn More about bomb

See words that rhyme with bomb Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for bomb Spanish Central: Translation of bomb Nglish: Translation of bomb for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of bomb for Arabic speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about bomb

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bomb

Definition of bomb

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Origin and Etymology of bomb

bomb Synonyms

Synonyms

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bomb

Definition of bomb

bombing

Examples of bomb in a Sentence

Recent Examples of bomb from the Web

Origin and Etymology of bomb

bomb Synonyms

Synonyms

Antonyms

Near Antonyms

Related Words

Phrases

BOMB Defined for English Language Learners

bomb

Definition of bomb for English Language Learners

bomb

Definition of bomb for English Language Learners

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bomb

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