Adjective

"There are no crimes and no criminals in these days," he said, querulously. "What is the use of having brains in our profession. I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it." I was still annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation; I thought it best to change the topic.

From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious ; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied.

She could stand it no longer. It was full of prying old women, she said, who stared in one's face, and of bumptious young men who trod on one's toes.

Adjective

Buffeted by criticism of his policy on Europe, battered by rebellion in the ranks over his bill to legalize same-sex marriage and wounded by the perception that he is supercilious , contemptuous and out of touch with mainstream Conservatism, Mr. Cameron earlier this week took the highly unusual step of sending a mass e-mail (or, as he called it, “a personal note”) to his party’s grass-roots members.

Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.