U.S. colloq. A lift, a shove up.
1833. [Seba Smith], Lett. J. Downing, xxxiv. (1834), 132. I got a pretty good boost in Boston, as I writ you in my last, by the editors giving me recommendations.
1841. ‘Dow, Jr.,’ Patent Serm., 239 (Bartlett). They [congressmen] ask you to give them a boost into the tree of office.
1879. Lowell, Poet Wks., 417. Bacchus that now is scarce induced To give Eld’s lagging blood a boost.
1883. F. E. Prendergast, in Harper’s Mag., Nov., 943/1. Nor has its completion given that ‘boost’ to California that the ‘Pacific coasters’ so fondly dreamed of.
