boom box

American  

noun

Informal.

1. a large, powerful portable radio and often cassette or CD player.

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Etymology

Origin of boom box

First recorded in 1980–85

Example Sentences

He’s going to come to set with a boom box and blast, like, Phil Collins.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 2, 2026

Passersby walked on as a boom box tied to the car’s roof repeatedly blared the words “The Ixil people do remember” and played the judge’s genocide verdict.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 12, 2023

I was tying my Nikes extra tight on the basketball court, when Duncan planted has boom box at the end of the bench.

From Salon • May 14, 2023

The defendant and two of his friends boarded the same train and one of them played music from a boom box speaker.

From BBC • Mar. 20, 2023

He owned the only boom box I had ever seen, and next to it he kept a tall stack of CDs with strange words on them, like “Mozart” and “Chopin.”

From "Educated" by Tara Westover