Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your vocabulary. This week's word:
BUMPTIOUS
When behavior combines conceit and pushiness, we call it bumptious (pronounced BUMP-shus). The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word as "crudely or loudly self-assertive; pushy." The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "offensively self-conceited; self-assertive (colloq. and undignified)."
Already, I suspect, a mental picture of several among your acquaintances is forming.
The OED suggests that the word is a nineteenth-century humorous formation from bump.
Example: From John S. Wilson's obituary of Pearl Baily in The New York Times: "Tall, buxom, exuberant and handsome, Pearl Bailey enraptured theater and nightclub audiences for a quarter-century. Her talents as an actress and singer were perhaps best blended in her role as the bumptious amateur matchmaker in 'Hello, Dolly!' which she played on Broadway for two years."