First Known Use: 1628
Dictionary
pedantic
adjective pe·dan·tic \pi-ˈdan-tik\
Definition of PEDANTIC
2
: narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned
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Examples of PEDANTIC
- It may seem pedantic to harp on what looks like mere procedure, but this is one case where the process is the forest. —Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker, 29 May 2000
- Yet not since Kenneth Roberts has anyone written of early New England life in such vivid and convincing detail. (The minor inaccuracies will stir only the pedantic.) —Annie Proulx, New York Times Book Review, 28 Apr. 1991
- What I'm objecting to is that picture books are judged from a particular, pedantic point of view vis-à-vis their relation to children—and I insist that a picture book is much more. —Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Co., 1988
- She is looking for the will, or for the diary; always looking for herself in history, the self the pious, pedantic Tolstoyans would disinherit and deny. … —Elizabeth Hardwick, Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays, (1962) 1984
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Origin of PEDANTIC
(see pedant)
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