How to Use bumptious in a Sentence

bumptious

adjective
  • The brief, bumptious chapters cover roughly a year, and the lead player doesn't come of age so much as rip away childhood's masks.
    John Domini, Dallas News, 1 July 2019
  • These dragons are not awaiting a human slayer, a bumptious avatar of St. George.
    Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Gorsuch’s abrupt pivot to arrogance has been on full display in his bumptious opinions and questions from the bench.
    Mark Joseph Stern, Slate Magazine, 18 Oct. 2017
  • The pageantry of the opening ceremonies—sometimes bumptious, and other times achingly sincere—are pieces of craftsmanship in their own right.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 23 Feb. 2018
  • Americans are not afraid of bumptious, raucous, and robust debate about these matters.
    Joe Palazzolo, WSJ, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Dickie is youngish and elegant, at least by the bumptious standards of Newark mobsters, and when the story begins he’s dealing with two separate problems.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Fogel had intimate access to Rodchenkov during this period, and the good/bad doctor emerges as both tortured and bumptious.
    Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 Aug. 2017
  • And the endangered youth isn’t a handsome boy but the bumptious, ginger Anna, who endures many adventures and hardships while trying to redeem her sister.
    Jesse Green, New York Times, 15 Sep. 2017
  • More than a few commentators have noted the contrast between the manager and the bumptious politicians fighting with one another over Brexit.
    Ceylan Yeginsu, New York Times, 10 July 2018
  • George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, is often seen as a bumptious obstacle to her son’s success.
    New York Times, 11 June 2019
  • Bumptious reporters shove microphones into faces and ask inane questions, and cameras are trained interminably on fires and auto accidents.
    Mike Scott, NOLA.com, 12 May 2017
  • The moment became legendary for many Canadians who relished the sight of our young, charismatic leader imposing his cheery manners on the bumptious American president.
    Jonathan Kay, WSJ, 25 Feb. 2022
  • Donald Trump’s bumptious, boisterous, blustering performance in his first face-to-face debate with Joe Biden changed the trajectory of the presidential race—giving the former vice president a hefty lead.
    Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 15 Oct. 2020
  • But if the tech industry’s bumptious history with antitrust enforcement is any lesson, a caretaker who has reluctantly stepped into the spotlight might be preferable to a charismatic leader born to it.
    Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times, 21 Oct. 2020
  • Britten’s orchestration brilliantly characterizes the different social strata: oozy string slides and tinkling harps, celesta and glockenspiel for fairyland; winds and strings for the lovers; bumptious lower brass and bassoon for the tradesmen.
    Scott Cantrell, Dallas News, 11 Aug. 2021
  • The soaring office walls, stripped of Young’s bumptious archaeology (including his vertical herd of taxidermy), had been repainted in the dull buttercream of Capitol Hill bureaucracy.
    Dan Zak, Anchorage Daily News, 17 Sep. 2022
  • The soaring office walls, stripped of Young’s bumptious archaeology (including his vertical herd of taxidermy), had been repainted in the dull buttercream of Capitol Hill bureaucracy.
    Dan Zak, Anchorage Daily News, 17 Sep. 2022
  • There is a tonal ambiguity to the bumptious romantic pursuit that follows, a surprisingly tremulous and fragile air, which may be what dismayed critics who were expecting a more conventional drama.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 9 Sep. 2019
  • Maybe the day of transformation will come soon and Trump will be nothing more than a bumptious, vulgar, ideologically unpredictable, utterly survivable conservative.
    David Remnick, The New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2017
  • The Apollon Musagète’s textures switched easily and impressively between the bumptious rhythmic ostinati and delicate, atmospheric harmonic effects answered by Ohlsson’s deft upper-register playing.
    Lukas Schulze, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Oct. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bumptious.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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