Word of the Day for Wednesday July 17, 2002:
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,"
[1]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,"
[2]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,"
[3]New York Times, October 7, 1998
_________________________________________________________
Bumptious is perhaps a blend of bump and presumptuous. |
