bumptious
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
Where does bumptious come from? For as fun as the word bumptious sounds, its meaning is more forceful. Bumptious is recorded in the late 1790s and is a blend of bump and fractious, meaning “unruly” or “irritable.” Bumptious bumps fractious up to the next level, meaning “offensively self-assertive.”Many more amusing Americanisms await in our slideshow "These Wacky Words Originated In The USA."
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of bumptious
First recorded in 1795–1805; bump + (frac)tious
Explanation
Someone bumptious is cocky, aggressive, and loud. Bumptious people jump ahead of everyone in line at the ice cream truck and steal subway seats from pregnant women. It's good to speak your mind and stand up for yourself, but it's not good to be bumptious. When you're bumptious, you're obnoxious. Someone who dominates a conversation without listening to others is bumptious. Someone who takes more than their fair share of something is bumptious. To be bumptious is to be selfish and annoying. Bumptious people are often arrogant and usually thoughtless, and bumptious behavior shows no concern for other people.
Vocabulary lists containing bumptious
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The stage for his artistic blossoming was set in 1482, when he left the rich mercantile city of Florence for the cruder, more bumptious northern city of Milan.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 18, 2024
It's unrecognisable from the bumptious singalong it became - the words Yellow and Submarine are conspicuously absent - but Martin says the development of the song shows the Beatles at their most harmonious.
From BBC • Oct. 21, 2022
On the Kaplan Penthouse’s piano, Charles played an appropriately bumptious figure from Monk’s “Bye-Ya” as punctuation for that anecdote.
From New York Times • Sep. 29, 2022
Gould and his bumptious crony Jim Fisk fought back by buying cows in Chicago and, in Steinmetz’s words, “shipping them to market at Vanderbilt’s bargain rates.”
From Washington Post • Sep. 16, 2022
“And what do you know? You are too young: you smell of your mother’s milk. You have the bumptious, graceless confidence of the recently born.”
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
