bumptious \BUMP-shuhs\, adjective: Crudely, presumptuously, or loudly self-assertive.
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
Meaning
: presumptuously, obtusely, and often noisily self-assertive : obtrusive
Example Sentence
“I wish the DJs on this station weren’t so bumptious,” said Andrea. “I’d prefer to just listen to the music.”
Did you know?
Etymologists believe that “bumptious” was probably coined, perhaps playfully, from the noun “bump” plus “-tious.” When “bumptious” was first used around 1800, it meant “self-conceited.” Charles Dickens used it that way in David Copperfield: “His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed . . . that it was a wig . . . and that he needn’t be so ‘bounceable’ — somebody else said ‘bumptious’ — about it, because his own red hair was very plainly to be seen behind.”
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