See Also: pedant(dictionary)
pedant(dictionary)

pedant (iou)



pedant noun & adjective. L16.
[French pedant from Italian pedante, perh. from 1st elem. of Latin paedagogus PEDAGOGUE.]
A. noun.
A schoolmaster, a teacher; a pedagogue. L16-E18.
A person who parades or reveres excessively academic learning or technical knowledge; a person excessively concerned with trifling details or insisting on strict adherence to formal rules or literal meaning. Also, a person obsessed by a theory, a doctrinaire. L16.
A. S. Neill Only pedants claim that learning from books is education. E. S. Person A third-rate pedant masquerading as a scholarly genius.
b. attrib. or as adjective. Pedantic. arch. E17.