pedant

• pædant (obsolete)

From Middle French pedant, pedante, from Italian pedante (“a teacher, schoolmaster, pedant”), associated with unrelated Italian pedagogo (“teacher, pedagogue”). Compare French pédant.

• enPR: pĕdʹənt, IPA^(key): /ˈpɛdənt/

• Audio (Southern England):

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pedant (plural pedants)

1. A person who makes an excessive or tedious show of their knowledge, especially regarding rules of vocabulary and grammar.
2. A person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.
3. (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.

pedant (not comparable)

1. Pedantic.

pedant (third-person singular simple present pedants, present participle pedanting, simple past and past participle pedanted)

1. (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 30 May 2017:

     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’.

• Pedant in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• stickler

• “pedant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “pedant”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “pedant”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• panted, pentad

Borrowed from German Pedant, from French pédant, from Italian pedante.

• IPA^(key): [ˈpɛdant]

pedant m anim

1. pedant (person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning)

• “pedant”, in Příruční slovník jazyka českého (in Czech), 1935–1957
• “pedant”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989
• “pedant”, in Internetová jazyková příručka (in Czech), 2008–2025
• “pedant”, in Akademický slovník současné češtiny, 2012–2025, slovnikcestiny.cz

From French pédant, from Italian pedante.

pedant c (singular definite pedanten, plural indefinite pedanter)

1. (derogatory) a pedant (someone pedantic)

   Synonyms: pernittengryn, (slang) flueknepper

• pedanteri
• pedantisk

• “pedant” in Den Danske Ordbog

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pedant (comparative pedanter, superlative pedantst)

1. pedantic

pedant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of pedō

• pedante

Borrowed from Italian pedante.

pedant m (plural pedants)

1. teacher; tutor; educator
2. pedant

Borrowed from French pédant.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛ.dant/

• Audio:

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• Rhymes: -ɛdant
• Syllabification: pe‧dant

pedant m pers (female equivalent pedantka, related adjective pedancki)

1. clean freak, neat freak, out-and-outer, pedant, prig, stickler (person obsessed with tidiness or cleanliness)

   Synonyms: porządniś, skrupulant, skrupulat

   Antonym: bałaganiarz

• pedant in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• pedant in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Borrowed from French Pedant.

pedant m or n (feminine singular pedantă, masculine plural pedanți, feminine and neuter plural pedante)

1. pedantic

Borrowed from German Pedant.

• IPA^(key): /pědant/; /pedânt/
• Hyphenation: pe‧dant

pèdant, pedȁnt m anim (Cyrillic spelling пѐдант, педа̏нт)

1. pedant (person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning)

• “pedant”, in Hrvatski jezični portal [Croatian language portal] (in Serbo-Croatian), 2006–2025

pedant c

1. a pedant (someone pedantic)

   Synonym: petimeter

• pedant in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• pedant in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• pedant in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)