pedantic
Americanadjective
-
ostentatious in one's learning.
-
overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching.
- Synonyms:
- doctrinaire, didactic
adjective
Other Word Forms
- pedantically adverb
- pedanticalness noun
- semipedantic adjective
- semipedantical adjective
- semipedantically adverb
- unpedantic adjective
- unpedantical adjective
Etymology
Origin of pedantic
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.
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
“One can read entire histories of American car culture and find no mention of Japanese or Asian American involvement,” Wang writes — but that’s about as pedantic as “Cruising J-Town” gets.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 30, 2025
And the percentage of gold in the portfolio is always fixed at 1/7 — or, if you are pedantic, 14.29%.
From MarketWatch • Oct. 9, 2025
Almost all his summer had been spent collecting pedantic data for his thesis, and now he was in a mood to think about important facts.
From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson
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.
