bumble-puppy

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble-puppy.

"Now, This!" 2008

I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either.

Travels in West Africa 2003

Playing bumble-puppy with Minnie Beebe, niece to the rector, and aged thirteen -- an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net and immoderately bounce; some hit Mrs. Honeychurch; others are lost.

A Room with a View 1924

Cecil was absent -- one did not play bumble-puppy when he was there.

A Room with a View 1924

"Saturn's all right for bumble-puppy," cried Freddy, joining them.

A Room with a View 1924

With the smallest luck, he and Fossell ought to be more than a match for a pair of whom, if one (Miss Gabriel) was wily, the other played a game not usually distinguishable from bumble-puppy.

Major Vigoureux Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

He drank freely and his game was the apotheosis of bumble-puppy.

The Desire of the Moth; and the Come On Eugene Manlove Rhodes 1901

I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either.

Travels in West Africa Mary H. Kingsley 1881

a hill, years and miles away from literature, music, pictures, politics, existing like a harem on the gossip of the Viceroy's intentions, and depending for amusement on tennis and bumble-puppy, and then consider, you yourself, whether you are the sort of person to be unquestionably happy there.

The Pool in the Desert Sara Jeannette Duncan

"Lucy, don't desert us -- go on playing bumble-puppy.

A Room with a View 1924