The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tulipomania \Tu`lip*o*ma"ni*a\, n. [Tulip + mania.] A violent passion for the acquisition or cultivation of tulips; -- a word said by Beckman to have been coined by Menage.
Note: In Holland, in the first half of the 17th century, the
cultivation of tulips became a mania. It began about
the year 1634, and, like a violent epidemic, seized
upon all classes of the community, leading to disasters
and misery such as the records of commerce or of
bankruptcies can scarcely parallel. In 1636, tulip
marts had been established in Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
Haarlem, Leyden, and various other towns, where tulip
bulbs were sold and resold in the same manner as stocks
are on the Stock Exchange of London.
--Baird.
Wiktionary
n. Enthusiasm for tulips, as in a period in the (w: Dutch Golden Age) during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed.
Usage examples of "tulipomania".
Dutch golden age conjure up any image for most people today, it is that of the trade in paintings, which were regarded mostly as aesthetically pleasing commodities rather than objects of art, or of the tulipomania, the crazed tulip market of the 1630s, which was so recently mirrored in our own dotcom bubble.
The son of a fishmonger who had profited in the tulipomania thirty years before, Joachim had come of age believing that only fools labored for their money when they might buy and sell for it instead.