rumbustious
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of rumbustious
1775–80; probably variant of robustious
Explanation
That kid who's had a little too much candy and is bouncing off the walls? Just call him rumbustious, an old word meaning noisy and undisciplined. If you want to talk about someone who is unruly or just plain out of control, it's good to use an unruly word. In easygoing American English, we might refer to a rambunctious child, but before rambunctious there was rumbustious. That playful adjective goes all the way back to the late 18th century and still occasionally gets hauled out for comic effect, though using rambunctious will get you fewer odd looks.
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.
