1. [n]  an explosive device fused to denote under specific conditions
2. [n]  strong sealed vessel for measuring heat of combustion
3. [n]  an event that fails badly or is totally ineffectual; "the first experiment was a real turkey"; "the meeting was a dud as far as new business was concerned"
4. [v]  throw bombs at or attack with bombs; "The Americans bombed Dresden"
5. [v]  fail to get a passing grade; "She studied hard but failed nevertheless"; "Did I fail the test?"

1. \Bomb\, n. [F. bombe bombshell, fr. L. bombus a humming or
   buzzing noise, Gr. ?.]
   1. A great noise; a hollow sound. [Obs.]
            A pillar of iron . . . which if you had struck,
            would make . . . a great bomb in the chamber
            beneath.                              --Bacon.
   2. (Mil.) A shell; esp. a spherical shell, like those fired
      from mortars. See {Shell}.
   3. A bomb ketch.
   {Bomb chest} (Mil.), a chest filled with bombs, or only with
      gunpowder, placed under ground, to cause destruction by
      its explosion.
   {Bomb ketch}, {Bomb vessel} (Naut.), a small ketch or vessel,
      very strongly built, on which mortars are mounted to be
      used in naval bombardments; -- called also {mortar
      vessel}.
   {Bomb lance}, a lance or harpoon with an explosive head, used
      in whale fishing.
   {Volcanic bomb}, a mass of lava of a spherical or pear shape.
      ``I noticed volcanic bombs.'' --Darwin.
   

2. \Bomb\, v. t.
   To bombard. [Obs.] --Prior.
   

3. \Bomb\, v. i. [Cf. {Boom}.]
   To sound; to boom; to make a humming or buzzing sound. [Obs.]
   --B. Jonson.
   

1. General synonym for crash except that it is not used as a noun. Especially used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb".

2. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix "panic" or Amiga guru, in which icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died. On the Macintosh, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga guru meditation number. MS-DOS computers tend to lock up in this situation.

3. A piece of code embedded in a program that remains dormant until it is triggered. Logic bombs are triggered by an event whereas time bombs are triggered either after a set amount of time has elapsed, or when a specific date is reached.

[Jargon File]