as in teacher
disapproving
a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details
They found the professor to be a dull pedant more concerned with the intricacies of punctuation than the craft of writing.
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Examples of pedant in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
True, big global history is not for pedants and must be selective to remain accessible.
—
Walter Scheidel, Foreign Affairs, 19 Apr. 2022
This Jet Ski Is Not a Jet Ski Incidentally, for the pedants out there (WIRED salutes you), technically this is not a jet ski, but a personal watercraft, or PWC.
—WIRED, 18 Nov. 2023
View More As knowledge of Greek has become more exotic—the mark of pedants, nerds, and graduates of expensive schools—capturing the barbarism of ancient Greek, and of the ancient Greeks themselves, has become harder.
—Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2 Oct. 2023
Want to annoy an investing pedant?
—Spencer Jakab, WSJ, 13 Feb. 2023
While its sister show Jeopardy is better known as a pedant's paradise (misspeaking or misspelling has long been known to sink contestants), every now and then Wheel of Fortune gets in on the action.
—Tyler Aquilina, EW.com, 1 Apr. 2021
Deeply learned, Morris was more a student of history than a teacher—always an enthusiast, never a pedant.
—Rachel Donadio, Travel + Leisure, 8 Dec. 2020
Here my inner pedant will not shut up: What if the popularity of the Beatles’ music was as much a product of a specific time and set of circumstances as the music itself?
—New York Times, 26 June 2019
Heck, even the creator of PGP (OK, GPG, for you pedants), Phil Zimmerman himself, asked us back in 2014 to resend something to him in plaintext.
—Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, 2 June 2018
Walter Scheidel, Foreign Affairs, 19 Apr. 2022
This Jet Ski Is Not a Jet Ski Incidentally, for the pedants out there (WIRED salutes you), technically this is not a jet ski, but a personal watercraft, or PWC.
—WIRED, 18 Nov. 2023
View More As knowledge of Greek has become more exotic—the mark of pedants, nerds, and graduates of expensive schools—capturing the barbarism of ancient Greek, and of the ancient Greeks themselves, has become harder.
—Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2 Oct. 2023
Want to annoy an investing pedant?
—Spencer Jakab, WSJ, 13 Feb. 2023
While its sister show Jeopardy is better known as a pedant's paradise (misspeaking or misspelling has long been known to sink contestants), every now and then Wheel of Fortune gets in on the action.
—Tyler Aquilina, EW.com, 1 Apr. 2021
Deeply learned, Morris was more a student of history than a teacher—always an enthusiast, never a pedant.
—Rachel Donadio, Travel + Leisure, 8 Dec. 2020
Here my inner pedant will not shut up: What if the popularity of the Beatles’ music was as much a product of a specific time and set of circumstances as the music itself?
—New York Times, 26 June 2019
Heck, even the creator of PGP (OK, GPG, for you pedants), Phil Zimmerman himself, asked us back in 2014 to resend something to him in plaintext.
—Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, 2 June 2018
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pedant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Pedant.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pedant. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.
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