To help or encourage something to increase, improve, or become more successful. To push or lift upward with force.
Originally American slang from the 1810s, possibly from dialectal 'boose' meaning 'to push.' The sense of helping or promoting something developed from the physical act of pushing upward.
Boost started as a very physical word about pushing things up, but it's become one of our most common metaphors for improvement - we boost confidence, boost sales, boost immune systems, all based on that original idea of lifting something higher.
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