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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

boomerism en · NOUN

Etymology

From boomer + -ism.

Meanings

  1. (US, historical, uncountable) A 19th century movement which campaigned for the extension of the American frontier.
    • The hyper-masculinity, optimism and enthusiastic boomerism of the American frontier moulded the young Briton's character. 2016, Neil Evans, edited by Huw Pryce, Writing a Small Nation's Past, Routledge, →ISBN:
    • Boomerism, then, was the most recent expression of the westering American spirit. 1986, Roy Harvey Pearce, “Yours Truly, Huck Finn”, in Harold Bloom, editor, Huck Finn, →ISBN, page 180:
    • Yet if the boosterism of the “dollar decade” had a sounder basis in reality than did the boomerism of the 1880s, there was ballyhoo in generous measure all the way from the Mason-Dixon Line to Florida's Gold Coast. 2014, Melissa Walker, James C. Cobb, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, →ISBN:
  2. (uncountable) An optimistic form of American capitalism that focuses on one industry.
    • А camp of techno-optimists rebuffs A.I. doomerism with old-fashioned libertarian boomerism, insisting that all the hand-wringing about existential risk is a kind of mass hysteria. 2024 March 18, Andrew Marantz, “О.К., Doomer”, in The New Yorker, page 42:
    • So I side with the mystics and think that the mechanists are caught in the boomerism of American hypercapitalism and are simply hawking their wares. In this unreflective boomerism of American hypercapitalism, one has to hype one's project to attract venture capital. 2004, William Irwin Thompson, Self and Society, →ISBN:
  3. (uncountable) The behaviours and attitudes of baby boomers.
    • Be warned against the tendency to build your young lives around anti-boomerism. In the end, it will be you that gets hurt, not the boomers. 1995, Mike Regele, Mark Schulz, Death of the Church, →ISBN, page 227:
    • Examples include: Bob Hope providing a queered alternative to World War II mythologies of maleness (something already addressed by Steven Cohan); Ierry Lewis's manic “femininity” as a reaction to 1950 sexual conservatism (as explored by Frank Krutnik); John Belushi embracing the runaway consumption of 1970 maleness; Bill Murray displaying the evolving cynicism of disillusioned baby boomers; Adam Sandler depicting a childish rage as a rejection of boomerism; and Ferrell often performing lampoons of previous generations of machismo. 2013, Scott Balcerzak, Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity, →ISBN:
    • The moment of rupture between the “hippie” and “yuppie” manifestations of baby boomerism is typically dated to the first presidential term of Ronald Reagan—or, even more specifically, to the moment when Reagan (a bastion of the older “greatest generation”) was shot by John Hinckley (a baby boomer) (Casale and Lerman 2002, 128). 2014, Brian Cogan, Thom Gencarelli, Baby Boomers and Popular Culture, →ISBN: