"Bumpkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worse and worse; the boat, under a close-reefed mizen on the bumpkin stepped as a foremast, was steered with an oar by the second master. When they had arrived within about two miles of the island, the wind shifted to a very severe squall, accompanied with lightning, thunder, and a heavy ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... "Of course not, bumpkin," said Archy impatiently, as the men burst into a guffaw, and then looked horribly serious as if they had not smiled. "We saw her swimming ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... most ridiculous creature in nature. He has been bred in the country a bumpkin all his life, till within these six years, when he was sent to the University, but the misfortunes that have reduced his father falling out, he is returned, the most ridiculous animal you ever saw, a conceited, disputing blockhead. So there is no great matter to fear ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... starting for the South, and apparently in high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of soldiership were to be seen,— bright buttons, a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes a round-shouldered bumpkin in the entire uniform. They require a great deal to give them the aspect of soldiers; indeed, it seems as if they needed to have a good deal taken away and added, like the rough clay of a sculptor as it grows to be ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... some outlandish name; we tell him what we want is its Latin one. It is Latin, he says, which he is actually speaking! We thought not. A crowd of fishermen and rustics are fast collecting around us; we try him with another one of the grasses. "Questo e asparago," cries a bumpkin, unasked, from behind. "Che asparagi?" says il mio Maestro, "e Pimpinella." We show him a Cytisus, and he calls it a Campanula. Seeing that so great a difference exists between our friend and Linnaeus, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... they should see the fairy of the daisy; a little, chubby, round-eyed child, with such innocent trust in his look! Even the most mischievous of the fairies would not tease him, although he did not belong to their set at all, but was quite a little country bumpkin. He wandered about alone, and looked at everything, with his hands in his little pockets, and a white night-cap on, the darling! He was not so beautiful as many other wild flowers I saw afterwards, but so dear and loving in his ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... is to clasp violently or enthusiastically, and perhaps ludicrously. To embrace is to clasp in a more dignified, perhaps even in a formal, way; the term also means to include, to comprise. "This topic embraces the other." "Did you see that ardent bumpkin embracing his sweetheart?" "Her sister gave her a graceful but none too cordial hug." "The wounded ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... son, all the while, being in a thriving way as a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits from his business of L300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and stumbling every ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... having a deep knowledge of the world, had taken the name of Fabris, and the younger brother had to assume it likewise. Soon afterwards he bought an estate with the title of count, became a Venetian nobleman, and his origin as a country bumpkin was forgotten. If he had kept his name of Tognolo it would have injured him, for he could not have pronounced it without reminding his hearers of what is called, by the most contemptible of prejudices, low extraction, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... A country bumpkin the great offer heard: Poor Hodge, who suffered by a broad black beard, That seemed a shoe-brush stuck beneath his nose; With cheerfulness the eighteen-pence he paid, And proudly to himself, in whispers, said, "This rascal stole the razors, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... bowsprit, main-top mast and figure-head. She fortunately struck us abaft the main channels; had she done so amidships, it would have meant the destruction of both ships and of about a thousand lives. Her larboard bumpkin dismounted the eighteen-pounder in the foremost lieutenant's cabin in the wardroom, and in falling clear she swept away both quarter galleries from the side, one of which was fitted up as a library for the first lieutenant, who lost all his books. Some of the mids who loved ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... this never be done?" cries the Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you these things for your good, I assure you; and besides, Square-toes" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Venus, that social star of evening and morning, might say,—"How absurd!" What a figure he cuts there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,—in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies,—like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,—or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... resemble a couple of full-grown bulls! See to his salutation, as he passes any of his neighbors—hear it. Does he touch his hat, and bow his head, and look down, as the great man goes by in his carriage? No! he leaves that to the cowed bumpkin of the south. He looks his rich-neighbor full in the face, with a fearless, but respectful gaze, and bolts from his manly breast a hearty, "Good day to ye, sir!" To his other neighbor, his equal in worldly matters, he extends ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... savings bank with them. But which of our deeds is selected and given to us? Perhaps quite a little one, one that we have forgotten, but which has been recorded—small as a pea, but the pea can send out a blooming shoot. The poor bumpkin who sat on a low stool in the corner, and was jeered at and flouted, will perhaps have his worn-out stool given him as a provision; and the stool may become a litter in the land of eternity, and rise up then as ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... landlord brought dice and dice boxes, and Phaon—who had come to the conclusion that he had to deal with a light-headed bumpkin, who represented merely so much fair plunder—began to play with a careless heart. The landlord brought more and more flagons of wine, wine that was mixed with little water and was consequently very heady. But the game—with some veering of fortune—went the freedman's way. He won ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... is hard to shake off. Release from duty was imperative, and as England was now calling for recruits, the War Office summoned Brock, an alluring sample of a soldier, to whom was assigned the task of licking the fighting country bumpkin—the raw material—into shape. This he did, first in England, then in Guernsey and Jersey. A vision of our hero, glorious in his uniform, was in itself sufficient to ensnare the senses of any country yokel. It was a ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... Mater!" he thought. "It's no go! I've got to give up Eastover and college and all and settle down into a country bumpkin! No fellow could see his mother look like that, and speak like that, and go his own gait; he's just got to ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... joke. Then he conducted the lean, lank, rawboned rustic into the presence of the judges. There were four of these men: Wythe, Pendleton, Peyton and John Randolph. These men were all to be colleagues of the bumpkin at the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia, but that lay in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men—Rodney Temple, for example—who never took any pains at all. Looking at her now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the sun struck coppery gleams ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one — I mean a downright bumpkin dandy —a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... learn you myself. You'll soon learn. It's not as if you was a bumpkin to teach! The man as can do anything, can ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told him the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to take in the bumpkin. So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew up as the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he was brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but the gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker. That is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... another; "and of a delicacy many degrees above thy bumpkin palate. Leave profaning it, therefore, and to thy ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... good as Ephraim's, found a little shop tucked away in Cornhill which had been miraculously spared in the advance of prosperity. Mr. Judson's name, however, was no longer in quaint lettering over the door. Standing before it, Jethro told the story in his droll way, of a city clerk and a country bumpkin, and Cynthia and Ephraim both laughed so heartily that the people who were passing turned round to look at them and laughed too. For the three were an unusual group, even in Boston. It was not until they were seated at dinner in the hotel, Ephraim with his napkin tucked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shall see my little bumpkin!" said he, and brought in a square-built child, who with fat, red cheeks, and round arms, stared around him. "That is a strong fellow! Here is something to take hold of! Tralla-ralla-ralla!" And he danced him round ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... pale-faced, slight man, having the outward appearance of a city clerk. But the fellow had a keen look, and there was something in the lines of his thin, determined lips that gave one confidence. I saw that he did not reciprocate this feeling. Indeed, I think he rather despised me for a thick-headed country bumpkin. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... and the steel buckles polished, while his hair was gathered back over his ears, and tied with a black ribbon in a queue behind, in the manner of gentlemen. But Israel Goodrich and Ezra also wore their hair in this manner, while shoes and clean shaved faces were occasional indulgences with every bumpkin who stood around. It was not then alone any details of dress, but a certain distinction in air and bearing about Perez, which had struck them. The discipline of military responsibility, and the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... ladylike manners," she said on another occasion, when Laura, summoned to the drawingroom to see a visitor, had in Mother's eyes disgraced them both. "Now, you've no more idea how to behave than a country bumpkin. You sit there, like a stock or a stone, as if you didn't know how to open your ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the Bumpkin, "what are you a-doing that for?" The Bumpkin was so ignorant that he thought the Monkey wanted to bewitch his cattle, and dry up ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... rouses us from our beds in the morning like the voice of conscience. Why must we pass examinations? Not that we may know the language of the people, for it is matter of daily observation, that of all the mysteries which perplex the humble mind of the country bumpkin in this land, causing him to scratch his— well, not his head—there is none which he gives up as hopeless sooner than the strange sounds addressed to him by the young saheb who has just passed his higher standard. He joins his palms in loyal acquiescence, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... enjoyment. She was a very roomy boat, being entirely open from stem to stern, and was conveniently rigged with two masts, the main and mizzen, upon which were set two standing lugs and a jib, the mizzen sheet being hauled out to the end of a bumpkin; consequently when once her sails were set she could easily ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... snow, and the whole thing was high and dry, with a list to starboard enough to slide him out of his seat. I lent a hand, of course, and soon had the wheel in the road again. It was quite dark, and I fancy that the fellow thought that I was a bumpkin, for we did not exchange five words. As he drove off he shoved this into my hand. It is the merest chance that I did not chuck it away, for, feeling that it was a crumpled piece of paper, I imagined that it must be ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long connected with the Times, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682] When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a gentleman?"—"Eh?"—"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding, and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The bumpkin raised his muscular figure ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... chief consequences of industrialism in Germany is that the people of the country are migrating to the towns. To the country bumpkin the city is an Eldorado and a lordly pleasure-house. In truth, he is much better off in it than in the stagnant life of the country. In the city he sees comfort on every hand, with possibilities of enjoyment of every kind, and if he does not soon get a share of the good things going he grows discontented ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... It is exactly calculated to hit the notions of a vulgar, ignorant, lazy, greedy, and unprincipled bumpkin. Such a fellow would see just far enough into the millstone to be tickled at the idea of cheating those lottery fellows. And the knave ends his letter with one more touch most delicately adapted to make Master Bumpkin feel certain that his cash ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... far was he a mere bumpkin? How far was Jacob Flanders at the age of twenty-six a stupid fellow? It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done. Some, it is true, take ineffaceable impressions of character at once. Others dally, loiter, and get ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... you never mean to fight the fellow—a—a being who wears such a coat! such boots! My dear fellow, be reasonable! Observe that hat! Good Gad! Take your cane and whip him out—positively you cannot fight this bumpkin." ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... young gallant introduced to-night into the world she lived in was no bumpkin, and was a dandy of the town. His name was Sir John Oxon, and he had just come into his title and a pretty property. His hands were as white and bejewelled as her own, his habit was of the latest fashionable cut, and his fair flowing locks scattered ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a big loutish man to an overgrown Gourd has not been lost in the English language, for "bumpkin" is only another form of "Pumpkin," and Mr. Fox Talbot, in his "English Etymologies," has a very curious account of the antiquity of the nickname. "The Greeks," he says, "called a very weak and soft-headed person ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... zany, harlequin, droll, punch, mime, farceur, scaramouch, grimacier jackpudding; boor, lout, gawk, gawky, lubber, put, bumpkin, churl, carl, tike; rustic, hind, clodhopper, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... alighted in a field and a country bumpkin came over with the crowd to see the fun. He had a pipe in his mouth. He was told to go away. He wouldn't for a while, but he soon left in a hurry. After the explosion they found bits of him and ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... having made a signal for assistance, and it being ascertained that she had lost her dinghy and bumpkin by a sea which struck her while crossing a tide-race, it was judged necessary to run for the nearest place where the damage could be repaired. We consequently anchored under Number 2 of the Percy Isles, to leeward of its south-west ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... enormous interest which the Public have in "a more efficient and speedy administration of justice," I am not surprised that a Second Edition of "Mr. Bumpkin's Lawsuit" should be called for so soon after the publication of the first. If any proof were wanting that I had not overstated the evils attendant on the present system, it would be found in the case of Smitherman v. The South Eastern Railway Company, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... wonder that bumpkin took it all for earnest,' he said. 'I should ha' done that myself. No, thankee, sir. I don't care about mixing with the lords and swells upstairs. I'll have a look in on the butler. Smoking the old pipe again, I see, sir. Not many old meerschaums knocking ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... This is a sort of wit one remembers to have heard at school, of a brilliant outsider; perhaps to have been guilty of oneself, a trifle later. It was, no doubt, a blaze of intellectual fireworks to the bumpkin squire, who came to London to go to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... affectation in a few lines of verse. He pretends that he was out walking on the highroad, and met a countryman who wanted to know what o'clock it was, and whether he was on the right way to the town or village he was making for. The writer saw at once that he was a simple bumpkin; and, when he heard that he had lost his way, he turned up his nose at the poor fellow, and ordered him to be off at once. Here ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... which hangs in the provost's house at Eton represents a rosy, solid, rather heavy-featured young man, with a flushed face,—Mr. Gladstone said that this was caused by overwork,—who looks more like a young country bumpkin on the opera-bouffe stage ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it would be useless to persevere in concealment, and said to the other with a good-humoured cheerful air, "Who are you who know me so well, and seem so much concerned about me?" "My name be Jack as well as thine," replied the honest-hearted bumpkin. Hodgkinson then discovered that the young man had been for sometime a stable-boy at Manchester, and was in the habit of going to his mother's house with the gentlemen of the long whip; but being elder than John had not been much noticed ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his doubts concerning ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... good for evil!" he exclaimed; "—a beast who has done me more wrong than ever I did in all my life! a scoundrel bumpkin who loses not an opportunity of insulting me as never was man insulted before! You are an insolent, heartless, depraved girl!—ready to sacrifice yourself, body and soul, to a man who despises you and yours with the pride of a savage! You hussey, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Princess, my bumpkin. But perhaps you have been too much concerned in your own earthy affairs to have noticed ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... gratitude to her for her condescension, and my extreme pleasure at having met with them. To say the truth, the compliment was so expressed, that the lady might easily appropriate the greater share of it, for Thorncliff seemed an arrant country bumpkin, awkward, shy, and somewhat sulky withal. He shook hands with me, however, and then intimated his intention of leaving me that he might help the huntsman and his brothers to couple up the hounds,—a purpose which he rather communicated by way of information to Miss Vernon ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Raw Recruit," The joke of the awkward squad, The rook of the rookies to boot, And a bumpkin, a dolt and a clod; But this much I'll plead in defense I seem popular with these chaps, For they keep me a'moving thither and hence ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... always kept in readiness for action in the fore part of the ship. The sharpest and strongest of these deadly weapons is generally stopped or fastened to the fore-tack bumpkin, a spar some ten or twelve feet long, projecting from the bows of a ship on each side like the horns of a snail, to which the tack or lower corner of the foresail is drawn down when the ship is on a wind. This spar, which ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... into the black frigate, and the instant afterwards there was a fearful concussion. The main-deck guns were driven in by the sides of the French ship, and at the same moment the maintopsail-yard was torn from the mast, and much other damage was done aloft, while the bumpkin, chain plates, cat heads, and bower anchor were carried away. In vain the captain called to his men to aid in lashing the two frigates together. Before they could assemble they had separated. Ronald, with a boarding party, was about to spring on to the deck of the French ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... gracioso, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old man amorous, rose in buttonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish marriage-brokers, the country bumpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome blacksmith with his wife the bakeress, the carriers jingling along the road and amply acquainted with the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... no more with his cane, but his insults were the same, if not worse. With time I became hardened, I no longer heeded anything; I was an ignoramus, a camel, a bumpkin, an idiot, a loggerhead—I was everything! It must further be understood that I alone was favored with these pretty names. He had no relatives; there had been a nephew, but he had died of consumption. As to friends, those who came now and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... as much celerity as a mountebank's Mercury upon a rope from the top of a church-steeple, every one charged with a mouthful of 'coming! coming!' This sudden clatter at our appearance so surprised me that I looked as silly as a bumpkin translated from the plough-tail to the play-house, when it rains fire in the tempest, or when Don John's at dinner with the subterranean assembly of terrible hobgoblins. He that got the start and first approached us of these greyhound-footed emissaries, desir'd us to walk up, telling ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... bumpkin-looking person. Belonging to the genus Yankee, he had yet a few peculiar traits of his own. He had a smallish, bullet-shaped head, set, with dignified poise, on a pair of wide, flat shoulders. His chest was broad and swelling, his limbs straight, muscular, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage |
