bumptious
adjective
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How should you use bumptious?
While evidence dates bumptious to the beginning of the 19th century, the word was uncommon enough decades later that Edward Bulwer-Lytton included the following in his 1850 My Novel: "'She holds her head higher, I think,' said the landlord, smiling. 'She was always—not exactly proud like, but what I calls Bumptious.' 'I never heard that word before,' said the parson, laying down his knife and fork. 'Bumptious indeed, though I believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young folks at school and college.'" The word is, of course, now in "the dictionary"; ours notes that it comes from the noun bump and the suffix -tious, echoing other disapproving modifiers including captious ("fault-finding") and fractious ("troublemaking").
Examples of bumptious in a Sentence
Matthew Jacobs, Vulture, 6 Dec. 2024
It’s all spanked along by one of those golly-gee bumptious holiday musical scores.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 27 Nov. 2024
The ländler dance in the second was robust and bumptious, with an undercurrent of darkness, and there was just the right amount of winking in the trio; the whole thing was a country fair picaresque.
—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 24 Nov. 2024
Despite lines that are initially chatty and chirpy, Corden shows how bumptious his character really is.
—David Benedict, Variety, 26 June 2024
See All Example Sentences for bumptious
Cite this Entry
“Bumptious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bumptious. Accessed 20 May. 2025.
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