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presumptuous

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//pɹəˈzʌmp.tʃuː.əs//
  • United Kingdom//pɹəˈzʌmp.tjuː.əs//
  • United Kingdom//pɹəˈzʌmp.ʃəs//
  • United States//pɹəˈzʌmpt͡ʃuəs//
  • United States//pɹiˈzʌmpt͡ʃuəs//

Making unwarranted presumptions or assumptions, often out of arrogance or excessive self-confidence, and thus exceeding appropriate or rightful limits.

adjective

  1. 1

    Making unwarranted presumptions or assumptions, often out of arrogance or excessive self-confidence, and thus exceeding appropriate or rightful limits.

    Preſumptuous Prieſt, this place cōmands my patiēce, / Or thou ſhould'ſt finde thou haſt dis-honor'd me.

    Is this the proud presumtious Esquire of the North, / That would not yeeld his prisoner to my Queen

    Keepe back thy seruant also from presumptuous sinnes, let them not haue dominion ouer me: then shall I be vpright, and I shalbe innocent from the great transgression.

    Dorothea checked herself suddenly with self-rebuke for the presumptuous way in which she was reckoning on uncertain events, but she was spared any inward effort to change the direction of her thoughts by the appearance of a cantering horseman round a turning of the road.

Etymology

From pre- + Latin sūmptus + -uous, from Middle English presumptuous, borrowed from Old French presumptieus, presumpcieus, presumptuos, from Latin praesumptuosus.

Forms

comparative
more presumptuous
superlative
most presumptuous
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).