Zoomer
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Explanation
A zoomer is someone who was born between 1997 and 2012, although date ranges vary. The formal term for the whole generation is Generation Z, but zoomer has become a popular shorthand for a person in this age group. Using letters to name generations started with Generation X. The term was used as a placeholder, and it stuck. Before that, generations were named after major historical events or cultural shifts. People in the generation before Gen X were called the Baby Boomers, as they were born during the post-WWII "baby boom." The term zoomer is a linguistic mashup of boomer and the Z from Gen Z. It began being used online as a joke, and it stuck, maybe because it reflects a generation that grew up in a fast-paced, digital world.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Man, if my chest hair wasn’t going visibly gray and I was instead a lanky, chiseled Zoomer with a hit LP I might feel the same way about top buttons.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 1, 2026
Eighty percent of Zoomer respondents reported feeling that young people were too dependent on technology, according to a 2023 Harris Poll survey.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 6, 2025
Directed by Halina Reijn, “Bodies” is an ensemble whodunit set in a McMansion in the woods that skewers Zoomer culture’s obsession with policing language even as its characters commit all manner of criminal acts.
From New York Times • Sep. 12, 2022
Set within this coterie of chatty, privileged, quasi-sociopathic 20-somethings, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is the Zoomer offspring of its Gen X parents “Scream” and “Shallow Grave.”
From Seattle Times • Aug. 9, 2022
So says John Peter Zoomer, the original collector and contemporary of Rembrandt.
From A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two by Dibdin, Thomas Frognall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
