pedant
English
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editFrom Middle French pedant, pedante, from Italian pedante (“a teacher, schoolmaster, pedant”), associated with unrelated Italian pedagogo (“teacher, pedagogue”). Compare French pédant.
Pronunciation
edit- enPR: pĕdʹənt, IPA(key): /ˈpɛdənt/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
editpedant (plural pedants)
- A person who makes an excessive or tedious show of their knowledge, especially regarding rules of vocabulary and grammar.
- A person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.
- (archaic) A teacher or schoolmaster.
- 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 24, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
- I have in my youth oftentimes beene vexed to see a Pedant [tr. pedante] brought in, in most of Italian comedies, for a vice or sport-maker, and the nicke-name of Magister to be of no better signification amongst us.
Derived terms
editTranslations
edit
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Adjective
editpedant (not comparable)
Verb
editpedant (third-person singular simple present pedants, present participle pedanting, simple past and past participle pedanted)
- (rare, humorous) To be or act as a pedant.
- 1648 October 10, Abraham Woodhead, Bodl., MS Clarendon 31, folio 276, verso:
- […] as any occasion of going behond[sic – meaning beyond] the sea with sombody, or pedanting in some Gentlemans house, &c., for clergy-employment I will accept of none.
- 1942 spring, George R. Hahn, “Gangway for Homer”, in Science Fiction Quarterly, number 6, Holyoke, Mass.: Columbia Publications, →OCLC, page 125, column 2:
- Tediously he pedanted, hedging around concerning the Perfect State, eventually coming out into the open with his own private Perfect State plan.
- 2000, Mark Barrowcliffe, “How the lady gets sawn in half”, in Girlfriend 44, London: Headline Book Publishing, →ISBN, page 223:
- ‘Most people in this country aren’t Christian, the standard package should not be Christian,’ Gerrard pedanted.
- 2005 February 25, Mark Dahl, chapter 18, in Covenant Betrayed: Revelations of the Sixties, the Best of Time; the Worst of Time, book 2 (Despair and Dessent), Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 149:
- Jim’s mother pestered him daily for a month to come home for a talk. At first he rejected the offer, knowing what to expect, dear old dad would dance around the room pedanting about some shit that didn’t make sense anyway.
- 2017, Ira Nayman, “Carrie-Anne’s Crew”, in The Multiverse is a Nice Place to Visit, But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There (Transdimensional Authority; 5), Dartford, Kent: Elsewhen Press, →ISBN:
- “Okay,” she said to the investigators, “how can I help you?” / “You, uhh, wouldn’t happen to have seven bodies lying around, would you?” Bao Bai-Leung, feeling a little ridiculous, asked. “Maybe in…your closet?” / “As I under stand human Anna to my,”[sic] Blarcch Beletchian pedanted at them, “there is not enough room for bodies to lie in a small space like a closet. Unless they were midgets like this person, or their limbs were detachable, or the closet was a gateway to eleven-dimensional space, or –” / “Oh, great!” TOM put in. “We got a literalist, here!”
- 2017 May 30, David Steele, “Why do pedants pedant?”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2017-05-30:
- So, why do pedants pedant? We don’t really know, but some tangential studies infer it’s to do with a mixture of personality, status-signalling and group identification.
- 2022, Alex Beeton, “‘A shame to bee out of a prison, or in a Felloship’: Cooperation and Education”, in ‘Not Infected with the Venime of the Times’: The Rump Parliament and Places of Learning, 1649-53[2], thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxfordshire: University of Oxford, page 212:
- When one Oxford fellow was ejected in 1648 he immediately wrote to his royalist patron seeking employment ‘going behond [sic] the sea with sombody, or pedanting in some Gentlemans house’.128 Whether he succeeded or not is not known, but others certainly ended up ‘pedanting’.
See also
editFurther reading
edit- “pedant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “pedant”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “pedant”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams
editCzech
editEtymology
editBorrowed from German Pedant, from French pédant, from Italian pedante.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editpedant m anim
- pedant (person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning)
Declension
editFurther reading
editDutch
editPronunciation
editAudio: (file)
Adjective
editpedant (comparative pedanter, superlative pedantst)
Declension
editDeclension of pedant | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
uninflected | pedant | |||
inflected | pedante | |||
comparative | pedanter | |||
positive | comparative | superlative | ||
predicative/adverbial | pedant | pedanter | het pedantst het pedantste | |
indefinite | m./f. sing. | pedante | pedantere | pedantste |
n. sing. | pedant | pedanter | pedantste | |
plural | pedante | pedantere | pedantste | |
definite | pedante | pedantere | pedantste | |
partitive | pedants | pedanters | — |
Latin
editVerb
editpedant
Middle French
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editBorrowed from Italian pedante.
Noun
editpedant m (plural pedants)
Polish
editEtymology
editPronunciation
editNoun
editpedant m pers (female equivalent pedantka, related adjective pedancki)
- clean freak, neat freak, out-and-outer, pedant, prig, stickler (person obsessed with tidiness or cleanliness)
- Synonyms: porządniś, skrupulant, skrupulat
- Antonym: bałaganiarz
Declension
editRelated terms
editFurther reading
editRomanian
editEtymology
editAdjective
editpedant m or n (feminine singular pedantă, masculine plural pedanți, feminine and neuter plural pedante)
Declension
editsingular | plural | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
masculine | neuter | feminine | masculine | neuter | feminine | |||
nominative- accusative |
indefinite | pedant | pedantă | pedanți | pedante | |||
definite | pedantul | pedanta | pedanții | pedantele | ||||
genitive- dative |
indefinite | pedant | pedante | pedanți | pedante | |||
definite | pedantului | pedantei | pedanților | pedantelor |
Serbo-Croatian
editEtymology
editBorrowed from German Pedant, from French pédant, from Italian pedante, from Ancient Greek παιδεία (paideía).
Pronunciation
editNoun
editpèdant, pedȁnt m (Cyrillic spelling пѐдант, педа̏нт)
- pedant (person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning)
Declension
editReferences
edit- “pedant”, in Hrvatski jezični portal [Croatian language portal] (in Serbo-Croatian), 2006–2024
Swedish
editNoun
editpedant c
Declension
editReferences
edit- English terms borrowed from Middle French
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms derived from Italian
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with archaic senses
- English terms with quotations
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English verbs
- English terms with rare senses
- English humorous terms
- English refractory feminine rhymes
- en:People
- Czech terms borrowed from German
- Czech terms derived from German
- Czech terms derived from French
- Czech terms derived from Italian
- Czech terms with IPA pronunciation
- Czech lemmas
- Czech nouns
- Czech masculine nouns
- Czech animate nouns
- Czech masculine animate nouns
- Czech hard masculine animate nouns
- Dutch terms with audio pronunciation
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch adjectives
- Latin non-lemma forms
- Latin verb forms
- Middle French terms borrowed from Italian
- Middle French terms derived from Italian
- Middle French lemmas
- Middle French nouns
- Middle French masculine nouns
- Middle French countable nouns
- Polish terms derived from Italian
- Polish terms borrowed from French
- Polish terms derived from French
- Polish 2-syllable words
- Polish terms with IPA pronunciation
- Polish terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:Polish/ɛdant
- Rhymes:Polish/ɛdant/2 syllables
- Polish lemmas
- Polish nouns
- Polish masculine nouns
- Polish personal nouns
- pl:Male people
- Romanian terms borrowed from French
- Romanian terms derived from French
- Romanian lemmas
- Romanian adjectives
- Serbo-Croatian terms borrowed from German
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from German
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from French
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from Italian
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from Ancient Greek
- Serbo-Croatian terms with IPA pronunciation
- Serbo-Croatian lemmas
- Serbo-Croatian nouns
- Serbo-Croatian masculine nouns
- Swedish lemmas
- Swedish nouns
- Swedish common-gender nouns