boiler room

American  

noun

boiler rooms plural

1. a room in a building, ship, etc., that houses one or more steam boilers.

2. Slang.

   1. a place where illicit brokers engage in high-pressure selling, over the telephone, of securities of a highly speculative nature or of dubious value.

   2. any room or business where salespeople, bill collectors, solicitors for charitable donations, etc., conduct an intensive telephone campaign, especially in a fast-talking or intimidating manner.

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boiler room British  

noun

1. any room in a building (often in the basement) that contains a boiler for central heating, etc

2. the part of a steam ship that houses the boilers and furnaces

3. the room or department in which the real work of an organization goes on unseen

4. ( chiefly US ) an office used by a team of telephone salespeople, esp of stocks and shares, operating under high pressure

5. 1. a fraudulent scheme in which investors are encouraged to buy non-existent, worthless, or over-priced shares

   2. ( as modifier )

      a boiler-room scam

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• boiler-room
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• boiler rooms
  plural

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

boiler room

Krauze joined what was then called the Vladimir Lenin shipyard in 1983, first in a coal-fired boiler room and later operating a crane.

From Barron's ● Mar. 7, 2026

The collapse seems to have originated from an explosion in the ventilation shaft of a boiler room, the city's fire commissioner Robert Tucker said in a news conference.

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2025

The pool’s mechanical room looks like the boiler room of an ocean liner — with giant tanks that purify pool water and another system that stabilizes the temperature.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2025

He and his siblings used to play in the ship’s boiler room, hopping between turbines.

From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2024

She led me to the service staircase, down past the alteration room, into the boiler room.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman