Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) to praise, to extol, esp. one’s own town or city; thus booster, one who makes such promotions.

1833		S. Smith Major Downing (1834) 215: You was the first person that ever give me a lift into public life, and you’ve been boosting me along ever since.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 573: It is only where [...] a casual word happens to strike the fancy of the people with such force as to make a word popular, like ‘boost’ [...] that really new words establish their claim to be considered essential parts of the language.
1887		F. Francis Jr Saddle and Mocassin 121: If you think that I’m trying to boost the place up because it belongs to us [...] call me an old mud-turtle.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 63: There’s a lot o’ them church people that boosted him two years ago that’s out now to skin him.
1906		‘O. Henry’ ‘Memoirs of a Yellow Dog’ in Four Million (1915) 111: Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band.
1917		E. Pound letter Aug. in Paige (1971) 121: Ah, that one might live to see the expression on the face of a new poet, whom I had just been boosting, upon seeing another still newer poet seated in an armchair.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 15: Young Bingo must have boosted me to some purpose.
1937		W.M. Raine Cool Customer 19: Garside was a booster for his city. He began to promote the town at once.
1940		O. Strange Sudden Takes the Trail 152: I ain’t boostin’ it on that account.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 72: [He] is a hot booster of unions.
1958		Murtagh & Harris Cast the First Stone 12: Chances are, if a call-girl is easy to meet she is not, as her boosters boast, ‘top-drawer stuff.’.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1980		G. Liddy Will 75: I glanced up and stared at something that was, to me, remarkable: an outdoor advertising sign in which the persons shown happily boosting the product were black.
1999		Christian Science Monitor 31 Dec. 13: But a chorus of boosters [...] say the area will retain a lot of its unique character.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 154: Clip Curtis and Leroy. Appease the Boys and play civic booster.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1906

S. Ford Shorty McCabe 178: No, I ain’t goin’ into the boostin’ line as a reg’lar thing.