This chapter stems from my long-standing interest in the etymology, or linguistic history, of film-industry and showbusiness terminology or slang. In particular, my interest is in the origins and use of the now-ubiquitous word ‘blockbuster’. Its use today – indeed, overuse – tends to be in connection with what I and Steve Neale, in our book Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History, refer to as ‘unusually expensive productions designed to earn unusually large amounts of money’ – that is to say, films which are not just exceptionally successful box-office hits but those which are specifically intended to be so, and are budgeted, made and marketed accordingly. However, while scholars and critics may attempt a certain precision in its use, popular usage is far less circumspect. In my experience as a university film studies tutor, ‘blockbuster’ is often assumed to be synonymous with the contemporary action film, the genre in which the largest sums are typically invested today and which often heads the box-office charts. Furthermore, it is not unusual to find ‘civilians’ (those moviegoers who are not members of the academic film community or elite film culture) describing virtually any and every Hollywood movie as a blockbuster, regarding the word as a synonym for the kind of mainstream picture the American film industry typically produces irrespective of genre. (In much the same way, ‘Hollywood’ itself is sometimes taken to stand for the whole of the film industry rather than the major American corporations in particular.)