bumpkin
pronunciation
How to pronounce bumpkin in British English:
UK [ˈbʌmpkɪn]
How to pronounce bumpkin in American English:
US [ˈbʌmpkɪn, ˈbʌm-]
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- Noun:
- not very intelligent or interested in culture
Word Origin
- bumpkin
- bumpkin: [16] Originally, bumpkin seems to have been a humorously disparaging epithet for a Dutch person: in the first known record of the word, in Peter Levins’s Dictionary of English and Latin words 1570, it is glossed batavus (Batavia was the name of an island at the mouth of the Rhine in ancient times, and was henceforth associated with the Netherlands). It was probably a Dutch word, boomken ‘little tree’ (from boom ‘tree’, related to German baum ‘tree’ and English beam), used with reference to Netherlanders’ supposedly dumpy stature. The phrase ‘country bumpkin’ is first recorded from the later 18th century.=> beam
- bumpkin (n.)
- "awkward country fellow," 1560s, probably from Middle Dutch bommekijn "little barrel," diminutive of boom "tree" (see beam (n.)). Apparently, though itself Dutch, it began as a derogatory reference to Dutch people as short and dumpy.
Example
- 1. He must really be dating the bumpkin !
- 2. I don 't want to act like a bumpkin .
- 3. A country bumpkin with ambition , I see .
- 4. Hey I 'm no country bumpkin !
- 5. Just let you all be prepared and don 't be a bumpkin !