pedant 
ped·ant (ped′'nt)
noun
- a person who puts unnecessary stress on minor or trivial points of learning, displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion
- a narrow-minded teacher who insists on exact adherence to a set of arbitrary rules
- Obsolete a schoolmaster
Etymology: Fr pédant, pedant, schoolmaster < It pedante, ult. < Gr paidagōgos: see pedagogue
pedant
n.
Converse of object
- annoy: Tautology: Always add ' back ' to words like return or revert in order to reverse their meaning and annoy pedants.
Adjective modifier
- only: Only pedants claim that learning from books is education.
- cartographic: The text on " Munros defined " provides enough material to keep the cartographic pedants chattering for months to come.
- smug: Bryson highlights the lunacy of applying Latin grammar to a Germanic language and the smug, slimy pedants it has given us.
- comic: Certainly there hangs about him a slight air of the comic pedant.
- old: I hate to sound like an old pedant but this is the normal definition of ' unpredictable ' not ' random ' .
A fertile pedant.
He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered hishousetosale, carried a brick inhis pocket as a specimen.
Clear Cymric voices carry well this Autumn night, Aneurin and Taliesin, cruel owls for whom it is never altogether dark before the rules made poetry a pedant's game.
Browse dictionary entries near pedant
- ‹ pedalfer
- ‹ pedal steel (guitar)
- ‹ pedal pushers
- ‹ pedal point
- ‹ pedal
- ‹ pedagogy
- ‹ pedagogue
- ‹ pedagogics
- ‹ pedagogic
- ‹ -ped
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