boomerask
boomerask verb: to ask someone a question, without really being interested in the answer, because the asker really just wanted to answer it themselves immediately after (and share an anecdote or story).
Verb
boomerask (third-person singular simple present boomerasks, present participle boomerasking, simple past and past participle boomerasked)
- To ask someone a question, without really being interested in the answer, because the asker really just wanted to answer it themselves immediately after (and share an anecdote or story).
- We introduce one pervasive way people attempt to reconcile these competing goals—boomerasking—a sequence in which individuals first pose a question to their conversation partner ("How was your weekend?"), let their partner answer, and then answer the question themselves ("Mine was amazing!"). The...2025 January 9, Alison Wood Brooks, Michael Yeomans, “Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions”, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, volume 154, number 3, Washington, D.C.: American...
- However, before you judge someone for it — you've most likely boomerasked in a conversation, too.2025 March 26, Fabiana Buontempo, “'Boomerasking' is how self-centered people are hijacking conversations”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26...
Noun
boomerask (plural boomerasks)
- An act or instance of boomerasking.
- Things really came to a head at 11-plus exam time, with loaded boomerasks about what school we were going to next, so that my fellow parent could tell me that they were trying to make the agonising choice between all the five million schools they'd had slobbering offers from.2025 January 23, Esther Walker, “Boomerasking is the new way to show off. Spare me”, in The Times, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 Jan 2025
Forms of boomerask
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | boomerasks |
| present participle | boomerasking |
| past participle | boomerasked |
| past | boomerasked |
| Noun | |
| plural | boomerasks |
Origin of boomerask
Blend of boomerang + ask. Coined by Alison Wood Brooks and Michael Yeomans in their 2025 paper Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions (see quotation below).
Words formed from boomerask
Questions about boomerask
- What does boomerask mean?
- Boomerask means to ask someone a question, without really being interested in the answer, because the asker really just wanted to answer it themselves immediately after (and share an anecdote or story).
- What part of speech is boomerask?
- Boomerask can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of boomerask?
- The past tense of boomerask is boomerasked.
Words near boomerask in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: boomerask (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “boomerask.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boomerask. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.