Adjacent Words

Pedant definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

PED'ANT, n.
1. A schoolmaster.
2. A person who makes a vain display of his learning.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit [syn: pedant, bookworm, scholastic]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle French, from Italian pedante Date: 1588 1. obsolete a male schoolteacher 2. a. one who makes a show of knowledge b. one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge c. a formalist or precisionist in teaching

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a person who insists on strict adherence to formal rules or literal meaning at the expense of a wider view. 2 a person who rates academic learning or technical knowledge above everything. 3 a person who is obsessed by a theory; a doctrinaire. Derivatives: pedantic adj. pedantically adv. pedantize v.intr. & tr. (also -ise). pedantry n. (pl. -ies). Etymology: F pédant f. It. pedante: app. formed as PEDAGOGUE

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Pedant Ped"ant, n. [F. p['e]dant, It. pedante, fr. Gr. ? to instruct, from pai^s boy. See Pedagogue.] 1. A schoolmaster; a pedagogue. [Obs.] --Dryden. A pedant that keeps a school i'th' church. --Shak. 2. One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge. --Addison. A scholar, yet surely no pedant, was he. --Goldsmith.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(pedants) If you say that someone is a pedant, you mean that they are too concerned with unimportant details or traditional rules, especially in connection with academic subjects. I am no pedant and avoid being dogmatic concerning English grammar and expression. N-COUNT [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Schoolmaster, pedagogue. 2. Vain scholar, conceited scholar, ostentatious man of learning.

Moby Thesaurus

Babbitt, Gongorist, Marinist, Middle American, Philistine, anal character, bluestocking, bourgeois, burgher, compulsive character, conformer, conformist, conventionalist, euphuist, fine writer, formalist, methodologist, middle-class type, model child, organization man, parrot, perfectionist, phrasemaker, phraseman, phrasemonger, plastic person, precieuse, precieux, precisian, precisianist, precisionist, purist, rhetorician, sheep, square, teenybopper, trimmer, wordspinner, yes-man