bumptious
- adjective
- /ˈbʌmpʃəs/
- Her bumptious attitude often rubbed her colleagues the wrong way, making it difficult to work together.
Examples
-
I felt the same way about the lovely scene in McCabe & Mrs. Miller when Warren Beatty, as an Old West entrepreneur who’s simultaneously slick and bumptious, goes into his monologue about how he, despite all appearances, has poetry in him.
Academic text (2008) -
Bumptious, fast-growing, and virtually unregulated, Wall Street was especially hazardous for the unwary and the gullible in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Academic text (2010) -
The performance began with the evening's only fault, a kind of bumptious ride through the first movement Allegretto section.
Blog text (1) -
Let's say I find your tone petulant and bumptious (which I do).
Blog text (23) -
" I've got your magazines, your Jets," the salesman says, ignoring her somewhat bumptious remark.
Fiction book (1996) -
The world has watched with admiration and contempt, envy and disdain, trust and fear, as the United States grew from a bumptious republic to the most powerful nation in history.
Academic text (1998) -
But the problem is that American conservatives are today, as they were in 1956, too populist, too majoritarian, too religious, too moralistic, too acquisitive, too middle-class, too reformist, too bumptious.
Academic text (2010) -
If it is at times a crude and bumptious medium, it sometimes has to be to disarm the false pieties and self-righteous gravitas in which our current elites too often clothe themselves.
Academic text (2011) -
People with "old" money—earned by bumptious ancestors whose rough manners had long since been conveniently forgotten—were always uncomfortable around those who had made, not inherited, their comforts.
Fiction book (1991) -
At the meeting, his bumptious remarks made everyone uncomfortable as he dominated the conversation.
Synonyms
Behaving as if you are more important or better than other people
Being too confident and acting proud so other people dislike you
Trying to seem more important or clever than you really are
Acting more important and formal than necessary
Very confident in a rude, loud way that annoys other people
Thinking you are much better than other people
Seeing yourself as much more important than other people
Acting as if you are better than other people
Being too confident in a proud, annoying way
Thinking you are more important than other people
Being too proud and too sure of yourself so you ignore advice and make bad decisions
Acting too proud and boastful
Being confident and forceful when you speak or act, sometimes sounding rude
Antonyms
How Arrogant
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Bumptious may come from the old idea of 'bumping' into people, so think of bump meaning 'to push'. A helpful way to remember bumptious is to imagine someone who 'bumps' forward with loud, rude confidence, which is why it means being too proud and pushy.