{"id":510,"date":"2018-08-08T14:02:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T18:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=510"},"modified":"2018-08-13T11:19:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T15:19:29","slug":"word-of-the-week-bumptious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/08\/08\/word-of-the-week-bumptious\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Bumptious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/08\/bumptious.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-512\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/08\/bumptious-300x203.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/08\/bumptious-300x203.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/08\/bumptious-768x520.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/08\/bumptious-1024x693.jpeg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>I first noticed this word when reading Willa Cather&#8217;s excellent novel <em>The Professor&#8217;s House<\/em>, way back in graduate school. She describes in great detail the overdone decor of the main character&#8217;s abode, including &#8220;the awkward oak mantles with thick round posts crowned by bumptious wooden balls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The alliteration stuck with me but so did the idea that an inanimate object, rather than a pushy, overly friendly person, could be &#8220;bumptious.&#8221; The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/24718?redirectedFrom=bumptious&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OED&#8217;s entry<\/a> gives a history only dating to the early 19th Century, from a humorous use of the word &#8220;bump.&#8221;\u00a0 The sense here is a conceited, self-assured, or offensive person, not a carved bit of wood.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>American Heritage Dictionary <\/em> adds a possible etymology of combining &#8220;bump&#8221; and &#8220;presumptuous,&#8221; which certainly describes a bumptious person, but not a ball.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Cather, so annoyed in other places with techniques made possible by modern power tools, just hated the woodwork she&#8217;d seen somewhere and could not resist the odd pairing of words. Whatever one might think of it, the usage stuck with me nearly 30 years, much like the memory of a really boorish, bumptious buffoon.<\/p>\n<p>This blog will continue all summer, so nominate a word by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image licensed for reuse, courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/turned-wooden-ball-hand-labor-63243\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pexels<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first noticed this word when reading Willa Cather&#8217;s excellent novel The Professor&#8217;s House, way back in graduate school. She describes in great detail the overdone decor of the main character&#8217;s abode, including &#8220;the awkward oak mantles with thick round posts crowned by bumptious wooden balls.&#8221; The alliteration stuck with me but so did the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/08\/08\/word-of-the-week-bumptious\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Bumptious<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,1172,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-language","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-8e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}