Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who pays undue attention to book learning and formal rules.
- n. One who exhibits one's learning or scholarship ostentatiously.
- n. Obsolete A schoolmaster.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A schoolmaster; a teacher; a pedagogue.
- n. A person who overrates erudition, or lays an undue stress on exact knowledge of detail or of trifles, as compared with larger matters or with general principles; also, one who makes an undue or inappropriate display of learning.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete A teacher or schoolmaster.
- n. A person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.
- n. A person who emphasizes his/her knowledge through the use of vocabulary.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete A schoolmaster; a pedagogue.
- n. One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit
Etymologies
- From Middle French pedant, pedante, from Italian pedante ("a teacher, schoolmaster, pedant"), of uncertain origin, traced by some sources to Latin paedagogans, present participle of paedagogare ( = to teach, from Greek "paedagogein" = to instruct children ). Confer French pédant. (Wiktionary)
- French pédant or Italian pedante (French, from Italian), possibly from Vulgar Latin *paedēns, *paedent-, present participle of *paedere, to instruct, probably from Greek paideuein, from pais, paid-, child; see pedo-2. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In contrast, a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like “fulgent” and “supercilious.””
“But any woman who could use that word pedant, I reasoned, call her ex-husband “duplicitous” and a “narcissist,” and describe an assistant manager we both worked for as a “troglodyte” was a woman I felt I could spend time talking to and perhaps even want to live with, despite the three kids, a first husband, and her extra year in age.”
“A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate assumption of the _grand seigneur's_ manner.”
“I might likewise mention the law pedant, that is perpetually putting eases, repeating the transactions of Westminster”
“He did not like a mere smattering of literary chatter; he did not like to be called a pedant; but he knew, if any man did, what literature was and what was knowledge.”
“In Shakespeare's day, a pedant was a male schoolteacher.”
“pedant' -- very frequently a 'pedant,' and now, it seems I am an”
“Athaeneus, to philosophers and travellers, an opiniative ass, a caviller, a kind of pedant; for his manners, as Theod.”
“He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care for him, and made no overtures to him, and he avoided them.”
“He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care for him, made no overtures to him, and he avoided them.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pedant’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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To Be or Not To Be
Words to live by (or not)
prescient, polyglot, fatuous, phlegmatic, mendacious, pithy, philistine, perspicacious, epicure, ebullient, probity, profligate and 9 more...
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No, thank you
Words with negative connotations
fetid, furtive, guile, chicanery, prevaricate, prodigal, meretricious, myopic, noisome, nominal, perfidious, perfunctory and 2 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1856 more...
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GRE
pejorative, austere, unconscionable, lissome, edify, winsome, axiom, malinger, abjure, deleterious, contumacious, peregrinate and 152 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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my GRE words
pedant, wizened, histrionic, logorrhea, frenetic, approbation, quibble, knell, acclivity, droog, prevarication, aplomb and 182 more...
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Prep my Lang
Collection of my wordnik word search
equivocal, anomaly, proliferate, assimilate, obscure, aberration, parse, circumnavigate, circumvent, decipher, prose, impasse and 94 more...
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GRE
anomaly, assuage, enigma, equivocal, erudite, fervid, placate, lucid, opaque, precipitate, prodigal, zeal and 113 more...
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Logodaedalus' Lexical Locutionary
Discombobulating the illiterate since the middle of the last century.
adiaphora, agitprop, alliteration, apophthegm, autarky, bête noire, bezoar, biorhythm, braggadocio, canaille, confabulate, confrère and 332 more...
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Consider the Lobster
By David Foster Wallace
percussive, discursive, lugubrious, docent, assiduously, berm, wag, bonmot, imbroglio, telegraph, fissile, rube and 220 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pedant.
frindley See also pedants corner. Mar 30, 2008