English edit

Etymology edit

From push +‎ -ful.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ˈpʊʃfʊl/
  • Hyphenation: push‧ful

Adjective edit

pushful (comparative more pushful, superlative most pushful)

  1. Energetic; pushy. [from 19th c.]
    • 1905, William Le Queux, The Czar's Spy[1]:
      All grades pass before you, from the pushful American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing Europe.
    • 1908, John F. Runciman, Haydn[2]:
      He met Gluck, who a little later was quite inaccessible to the most pushful of young men; also Dittersdorf and Wagenseil, who, whatever we may think of them, were very high and unapproachable musicians in their time.
    • 1917, Various, Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917[3]:
      'Twas not by barking mortars that the pushful CAESAR scored; He trusted close formations and the silent stabbing sword.
    • 1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 189:
      Buzzaway was one of the privileged (or pushful) people who were sometimes to be seen riding along a road beside the huntsman []