What's the difference between astute and pedant?

Astute


Definition:

  • (a.) Critically discerning; sagacious; shrewd; subtle; crafty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There is an enjoyment that comes with owning it, a pleasure, but also he is an astute businessman.
  • (2) Blair knew Short was close to Brown at the time and had astutely chosen her to be the messenger.
  • (3) With astute assessment and intervention, agitation can be prevented and treated to enhance recovery from critical illness.
  • (4) Latham is angry, outrageous, insulting – with a lifelong chip on his shoulder – as well as astute, brave and far more readable than most.
  • (5) The critical care nurse who is astute to the possible causes of postoperative delirium and to treatments and interventions required will help to minimize the morbidity associated with postoperative delirium.
  • (6) He and Hunt are too politically astute to fall out.
  • (7) The cause of his chief complaint and presenting symptoms challenged the astuteness of clinicians, surgeons, and histopathologists on two continents and the high seas.
  • (8) The astute Rawling pointed out to Klitschko that his opponent was capable of anything – Chisora had bitten one opponent in the ring while kissing another at a press conference.
  • (9) Under the astute, paternal Wicks, Cooper won his first nine fights, the ninth against an old foe, the 15-stone Bygraves, which was especially rewarding.
  • (10) However, she is the most astute image-shaper in sport bar none, seducing swathes of tame tennis writers to plug her sweets, charming hosts with just a hint of a smile, disarming critics with a pursed-lip frostiness of which Madonna would be proud.
  • (11) They alert the astute examiner to several life-threatening problems that result from both benign and malignant islet cell tumors, adenocarcinomas of the pancreas, and pancreatic endocrine and inflammatory diseases.
  • (12) Soaring land values and astute buying and selling have helped the value of the Crown Estate pass £10bn for the first time, a rise of 15% over the past year alone.
  • (13) Because, as Rafael Behr so astutely observed recently , when immigration minister Mark Harper's rhetoric, in justifying this deplorable campaign, strays in the same breath on to immigration in general putting "pressure on our infrastructure", the distinction between legal and illegal immigrant is lost.
  • (14) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
  • (15) As she matured she also developed into an astute and sensitive dance actor; her portrayal of characters such as Manon or Natalia Petrovna in A Month in the Country were refreshingly free of ballet cliche.
  • (16) As a portrait of modern society, it is startlingly astute – a scene with two schoolgirls arguing at a bus stop is uncanny in its depiction of south London slang, and speech mannerisms, and all the more notable because this is so rarely done accurately and with empathy.
  • (17) At one point Neymar began to compare himself to previous winners Ronaldo and Ronaldinho prompting Scolari to cut in, cuffing him fondly on the back of the neck while making an astute diversionary remark about comparable hairstyles.
  • (18) Physicians should focus astutely on internal and external sites of inflammation as possible focuses for tumor recurrence in the follow-up of the cancer patient.
  • (19) Although elderly patients may present a special challenge, the negative consequences of immobility can be avoided, to a significant extent, with astute and vigilant nursing management.
  • (20) Politically astute, photogenic and backed by his father’s political machine, Biden was elected attorney general of Delaware with 52.6% of the vote.

Pedant


Definition:

  • (n.) A schoolmaster; a pedagogue.
  • (n.) One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Let me be one of 1,057 well-read pedants to let you know that Giovani dos Santos, 'the Mexican Ronaldinho' (last week's O Fiverão ) actually plays for Villarreal and not Málaga.
  • (2) 7.53pm BST Pedant repellant Style guide: GEORGE: What is Holland?
  • (3) He said localness remained key to small stations' success, but added that regulation should move away from "outdated" and "pedantic" box-ticking to focus on output rather than input.
  • (4) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
  • (5) For pedants and non-pedants it’s the ultimate horror.
  • (6) "He found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a 'sick Nazi orgy' as the News of the World claimed, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform," Dacre added.
  • (7) Although some find the distinction pedantic, it is useful to reserve the term hypoglycaemia for this biochemical state, and neuroglycopenia for the clinical syndrome that results.
  • (8) They thought he was cool, smart without being pedantic, and seemed to have his act together.
  • (9) The Finns were pretty cool; the Swedes, pedantic but resigned; the Danes did get a little fighty; the Icelanders were irritated not to have been given more attention; but the Norwegians, boy, they were not happy.
  • (10) Photograph: Alamy If you aren’t put off by a high density of boutique moustaches and pedantic coffee connoisseurs, Stoneybatter is a worthwhile deviation from Temple Bar, Grafton Street and the other well-trodden tourist zones.
  • (11) 6.40pm BST An early email from Zachary Gomperts-Mitchelson "Now, I know you said arguably, and trying, admittedly not that hard, to avoid sounding like an insufferable pedant, but surly the biggest game in Dortmund's history has got to be the Champions League final against Juventus that they won in 1996?"
  • (12) 9 None sense A sure sign of a pedant is that, under the impression that none is an abbreviation of not one, they will insist on saying things like "none of them has turned up".
  • (13) "Let me completely fail to avoid sounding like an insufferable pedant by saying that Zachary Gomperts-Mitchelson succintly said what we were all thinking, except that Dortmund won the Champions' League in 1997, not 1996," he writes.
  • (14) Furthermore, the ministerial code is pedantically explicit about the minister's total accountability for all the special adviser's actions.
  • (15) 28 mins: Look at the pedantic dolts I have to deal with: "So which bit of '4 mins ... 7mins ... 10 mins' is 'minute-by-minute' commentary, exactly?"
  • (16) There are visitors, presents, pedantic calls to NHS Direct – fatherhood's getting started!
  • (17) The magistrate, who paid “pedantic” and “meticulous” attention to detail, had definitely ordered weekend-only access, Treverton said.
  • (18) What made their embarrassment so irresistible to the more pedantic of their fellow engineers, who rushed in to make judgments about what had happened, was that they seemed to have brought it on themselves.
  • (19) The particle "up" is an intransitive preposition and does not require an object, so even the most pedantic of pedants would have no objection to a phrase like "This is pedantry with which I will not put up."
  • (20) When I’ve said this before on Twitter, people get into a pedantic spin about whether or not Jews are a race or a religion, but that’s irrelevant: they are considered a race by racists.