We study the 2D incompressible Boussinesq equation without thermal diffusion, and aim to construct rigorous examples of small scale formations as time goes to infinity. In the viscous case, we construct examples of global smooth solutions satisfying sup τ ∈[0,t] ∇ρ(τ ) L 2 t α for some α > 0. For the inviscid equation in the strip, we construct examples satisfying ω(t) L ∞ t 3 and sup τ ∈[0,t] ∇ρ(τ ) L ∞ t 2 during the existence of a smooth solution. These growth results hold for a broad class of initial data, where we only require certain symmetry and sign conditions. As an application, we also construct solutions to the 3D axisymmetric Euler equation whose velocity has infinite-in-time growth.