pedant
[ped-nt]
- a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning.
- a person who overemphasizes rules or minor details.
- a person who adheres rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense.
- Obsolete. a schoolmaster.
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Origin of pedant
Synonyms
See more synonyms for pedant on Thesaurus.com2. hairsplitter.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for pedant
Contemporary Examples
Call me a Limbaugh pedant, but Rush is on in the afternoon; has been for 22 years.
Historical Examples
You think yourself happy because you are wise, said a philosopher to a pedant.
Tales And Novels, Volume 8 (of 10)Maria Edgeworth
But the license is actually got: the parson is provided: the pedant Brand is the man.
Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9)Samuel Richardson
Any one who questions our triumphant progress is tabooed for a pedant.
Another SheafJohn Galsworthy
He talks pleasantly, and nothing of a pedant, as I half dreaded he might be.
The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. I (of II)Charles James Lever
It has been well said of him that he never became either a pedant or a doctrinaire.
Erasmus and the Age of ReformationJohan Huizinga
pedant
- a person who relies too much on academic learning or who is concerned chiefly with insignificant detail
- archaic a schoolmaster or teacher
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Word Origin
C16: via Old French from Italian pedante teacher; perhaps related to Latin paedagōgus pedagogue
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for pedant
n.
1580s, "schoolmaster," from Middle French pédant (1560s) or directly from Italian pedante, literally "teacher, schoolmaster," of uncertain origin, apparently an alteration of Late Latin paedagogantem (nominative paedagogans), present participle of paedagogare (see pedagogue). Meaning "person who trumpets minor points of learning" first recorded 1590s.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper