Sample sentences for BUMPTIOUS

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Definition

offensively assertive or confident

She is a bumptious young editor who will change her ways or lose her job.

bumptious = offensively assertive or confident

I was still annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- A Study In Scarlet
Hammerfield's judgment of Ernest, which was to the effect that he was "an insolent young puppy, made bumptious by a little and very inadequate learning."
Jack London -- The Iron Heel
It was their confidence, maybe—their blissful, swinish ignorance, their bumptious self-satisfaction, and, worst of all, their hope.
John Gardner -- Grendel

bumptious = offensively assertive or confident

You call yourself humble and sinful, but you are the most Bumptious of your sex.
Charles Dickens -- Little Dorrit
It's some of those secular priests, ignorant, bumptious——"
James Joyce -- Dubliners
And each for all its bumptiousness brought with it the same thing: the Scripture on which our ethics, our art and poetry, and our relationships are built.
John Steinbeck -- East of Eden

(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)

I heard that Mr. Sharp's wig didn't fit him; 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.
Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield
Leora and Clara Tredgold saw each other once or twice, but they were uncomfortable, and a fortnight later, when the most prominent physician in town dined with the Tredgolds and attacked Martin as a bumptious and narrow-visioned young man, both the Tredgolds listened and agreed.
Sinclair Lewis -- Arrowsmith
For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother.
James Joyce -- Ulysses

(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)

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