Pedantic

Pedant

Pedant

Person obsessed with detail or process, often negatively perceived

Not to be confused with Pendant.

A pedant (/ˈpɛd.ənt/ PED-ent) is a person who is excessively concerned with formalism, accuracy and precision, or one who makes an ostentatious and arrogant show of learning.

"The Pedant" by caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson

Etymology

Look up pedant in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The English language word pedant comes from the French pédant (used in 1566 in Darme & Hatzfeldster's Dictionnaire général de la langue française) or its older mid-15th century Italian source pedante, 'teacher, schoolmaster'.[1][2] (Compare the Spanish pedante.[3]) The origin of the Italian pedante is uncertain, but several dictionaries suggest that it was contracted from the medieval Latin pædagogans, present participle of pædagogare, 'to act as pedagogue, to teach' (Du Cange)[4] (see pedagogy).[5][6] The Latin word is derived from Greek παιδαγωγός, paidagōgós, παιδ- 'child' + ἀγειν 'to lead', which originally referred to a slave who escorted children to and from school but later meant "a source of instruction or guidance".[7][8]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "pédant". dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2021-06-02.
  2. [2]
    "Pedantic – Examples and Definition of Pedantic". Literary Devices. 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2021-06-02.
  3. [3]
    O'Brian, Robert D. (2014-02-18). A Comparative Vocabulary Study Guide: Spanish to Portuguese to English to Chinese. First Edition Design Pub. ISBN 978-1-62287-544-3.
  4. [4]
    "pedant". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 2014. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
  5. [5]
    "Pedantic - Examples and Definition of Pedantic". Literary Devices. 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2021-08-31.
  6. [6]
    Chambers, William (1878). Chambers's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. W. & R. Chambers.
  7. [7]
    "pedant, n. and adj". The Oxford English Dictionary (Draft ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-08-07.
  8. [8]
    Harper, Douglas. "pedant". Online Etymology Dictionary.
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