WORD OF THE DAY: BUMPTIOUS

WORD OF THE DAY: BUMPTIOUS

adjective | BUMP-shus

What It Means

Bumptious describes people who are rudely and often noisily confident or over-assertive. It can also be applied to actions or behaviors that show this same attitude.

// Our host apologised for the bumptious party guest who caused a scene before being asked to leave.

Examples of BUMPTIOUS

“She comes across as a bumptious, irritating ten-year-old who believes that her main vice, her steam-roller self-confidence, is a virtue.” — Lloyd Evans, The Spectator (London), 17 Aug. 2024.

Did You Know?

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 call 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”).

Merriam Webster Dictionary