Zoom means to move very fast, like a race car zooming down a straightaway or a skateboarder zooming down a hill. When something zooms, it doesn't just go quickly: it moves with speed that catches your attention. A hummingbird zooms from flower to flower so fast you can barely follow it with your eyes.

The word also describes what happens when a camera moves in for a closer look. When you zoom in on a photo, you make part of it larger so you can see details you'd miss otherwise. Photographers zoom in to capture a bird's feathers or zoom out to show an entire landscape.

During a time when many people worked and studied from home, Zoom (with a capital Z) became the name of a popular video calling program, though people used other programs too. When someone said they had “a Zoom meeting,” they usually meant a video call, similar to how people sometimes say “Kleenex” when they mean any tissue.