pedantic
Americanadjective
-
ostentatious in one's learning.
-
overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching.
- Synonyms:
- doctrinaire, didactic
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of pedantic
Explanation
There's nothing wrong with focusing on the details, but someone who is pedantic makes a big display of knowing obscure facts and details. Pedantic means "like a pedant," someone who's too concerned with literal accuracy or formality. It's a negative term that implies someone is showing off book learning or trivia, especially in a tiresome way. You don't want to go antique-shopping with a pedantic friend, who will use the opportunity to bore you with his in-depth knowledge of 18th-century porcelain kitty-litter boxes.
Vocabulary lists containing pedantic
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 7
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Bird-watchers are tense, competitive, selfish, shifty, dishonest, distrusting, boorish, pedantic, unsentimental, arrogant and - above all, envious" he wrote.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Arguments to the contrary are overly cautious and pedantic.
From Slate ● Mar. 29, 2026
Byrne, on the other hand, gives a worthy performance that saves “Tow” from its own pedantic trappings and functions as a similarly fed-up complement to her character in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2026
The critic James Wood decried Mr. Barnes as “a thoroughly English writer,” meaning that he is clever and pedantic and emotionally repressed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
Anyone who’s so petty and pedantic at the age of fifty-four was born that way and is never going to change.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
