Word of the Day

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

bumptious

\BUMP-shuhs\ , adjective;

Crudely, presumptuously, or loudly self-assertive.

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Quotes:

The clown in the girl is bumptious as can be: bouncing about in the peaked cap and oversized coat of a boy she hasn't learned to love yet, pacing in lockstep behind a fellow-lodger for the sheer love of badgering him, blowing out her cheeks like a fussed walrus when crossed.

-- Walter Kerr, Anne Frank Shouldn't Be Anne's Play, New York Times, January 7, 1979

Still a tremendous singer and a man so confident of his own sex appeal that he could make the most outrageously bumptious behaviour seem not only engaging but also entirely natural.

-- David Sinclair, "Larger than life and twice as rocky", Times (London), March 13, 2000

Wells did not meet his father until he was an adult, by which time he had developed his own blunt, sometimes bumptious personality.

-- George Vecsey, "An Outsider Who Became an Insider", New York Times, October 7, 1998

Origin:

Bumptious is perhaps a blend of bump and presumptuous.