rambunctious
adjective
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Rambunctious Has (Possible) British Origins
Rambunctious first appeared in print in the early half of the 19th century, at a time when the fast-growing United States was forging its identity and indulging in a fashion for colorful new coinages suggestive of the young nation's optimism and exuberance. Rip-roaring, scalawag, scrumptious, hornswoggle, and skedaddle are other examples of the lively language of that era. Did Americans alter the largely British rumbustious because it sounded, well, British? That could be. Rumbustious, which first appeared in Britain in the late 1700s just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was probably based on robustious, a much older adjective that meant both "robust" and "boisterous."
Synonyms
Examples of rambunctious in a Sentence
Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times, 25 Nov. 2024
Zoë is devoted to the family dog, Cece, a rambunctious mutt and a licker.
—Julia Whelan Krish Seenivasan Lance Neal, New York Times, 25 Nov. 2024
The street racing is all but sidelined for a rambunctious heist plot that culminates in a bank vault laying ruin to Rio de Janeiro, a sequence that numbers amongst the series’ most famous.
—Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 20 Nov. 2024
Burgess described Lucien as quite rambunctious early on in the show but explained that his narrative arc offers complexity as the show progresses.
—Andrés Buenahora, Variety, 22 Nov. 2024
See all Example Sentences for rambunctious 
Dictionary Entries Near rambunctious
Cite this Entry
“Rambunctious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rambunctious. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.
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rambunctious
adjective
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