boiler roomn.
/ˈbɔɪlə ruːm/, U.S. /ˈbɔɪlər ˌrum/ 1. A room or space containing a boiler or boilers, esp. in a steamship or large building.
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society > occupation and work > equipment > machine > machines which impart power > boiler > [noun] > house for
boiler room1820
boiler-house1885
1820 Morning Chron. 6 Dec. 3/4 Last week a boy went into the boiler-room of the steam-engine on the Wheal Golden, Lead, and Silver Mine..for the purpose of warming himself.
1872 Ann. Rep. School Comm. City of Boston 1871 445 In the northerly corner is the boiler room.., in which are three boilers..which supply the steam for heating the building.
1963 Mariner's Mirror 49 201 They all had single-ended boilers placed back to back in two boiler rooms, their uptakes leading to a single telescopic funnel.
1995 D. McLean Bunker Man 274 It was very warm in the boiler-room, and the noise of the burner and the big fans blowing hot air away through the school roared and hummed.
2011 P. Eade Prince Philip xii. 148 A merchant ship leading one line of the convoy cut through into the forward boiler room of the Wallace.
2.
a. U.S. Politics. A place used as a centre of operations for an election campaign; (later) spec. a room equipped for teams of volunteers to make telephone calls soliciting support for a party or candidate (cf. sense 2b).In quot. 1892 in figurative context.
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1892 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Disp. 23 Oct. 25/1 [The national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties] are the boiler-rooms of the Presidential campaign, the places where steam is gotten up for the political machines of fourty-four states... This is why a visit to the two party boiler-rooms is especially interesting this week.
1951 N.Y. Times 2 Nov. 15/4 The committee..operates a ‘boiler room’, sending out quantities of campaign literature.
1956 N.Y. Times 9 Oct. 28/3 Teams of Republicans will use these ‘boiler rooms’ to reach every telephone subscriber in the state with a personal appeal to vote for President Eisenhower.
1972 AMA News Oct. (Polit. Activity Suppl.) 8 a/2 Ideally you should have a ‘boiler room’ set up in the campaign headquarters. The ‘boiler room’ consists of a bank of telephones..plus, of course, tables, chairs and the necessary materials.
1993 Vanity Fair Sept. 210/3 She worked for Bobby for four years and was in the boiler room..during the campaign.
2012 New Yorker 19 Nov. 29/2 Every Presidential campaign has a nerve center, known as a boiler room, for running Election Day operations.
b. Originally North American. An office housing an unscrupulous or fraudulent telemarketing operation, typically one selling worthless or highly speculative investments. Frequently attributive.
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1925 Helena (Montana) Independent 10 Mar. 5/6 Swindlers who fleece the public through sales of fake stocks work by telephone in what is called a boiler room.
1953 Life 8 June 153/1 The Ontario Securities Exchange in the last two years has clamped down on the ‘boiler room’ operators.
1983 Bond Buyer (Nexis) 11 Aug. Mr. Abrams said that in recent years there has been a resurgence of ‘boiler room’ activity in the securities and commodities fields.
2001 K. Walker & M. Schone Son of Grifter xxiv. 239 Every other strip mall held a boiler room, those offices full of phone banks where aggressive guys..dial suckers and sell them things that don't exist.
2014 Sun (Nexis) 16 Jan. 40 City cops reckon they have smashed a boiler room scam responsible for swindling thousands of people.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2015; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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