Words at Play : Top 10 Words for Useful & Intriguing Concepts
Definition:
a critic or teacher of music characterized by timid and excessive reliance on rules; more broadly, a pedant
Example:
"That beckmesser can't hear the genius because he's too busy criticizing."
About the Word:
The operatic character Sixtus Beckmesser made his stage (and linguistic) debut in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner's Beckmesser was a nervous and narrow-minded clerk whose devotion to the rules made him both a pedant and a musical philistine.
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