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. 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. 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
- 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.
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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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 4084 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...
frindley See also pedants corner. Mar 30, 2008