What's the difference between fussy and pedantic?

Fussy


Definition:

  • (superl) Making a fuss; disposed to make an unnecessary ado about trifles; overnice; fidgety.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Infants in the third quartile were fussy at the commencement of the period and became gradually more placid from the fifth week of life.
  • (2) The results indicate that intra-uterine sounds calm 90 per cent of babies who are fussy or crying but have no evident effect on babies who are awake but merely alert or who are slightly drowsy.
  • (3) You can't grow bananas in Alaska or broccoli at the equator unless you're willing to expend a lot of money to create a very controlled environment, and even then, it's going to be fussy and painstaking.
  • (4) He is yet to find somewhere despite being described as not a particularly "fussy buyer".
  • (5) Individual differences in positive, negative, sociability, and soothability were related to the questionnaire scores of fussy-difficult and unadaptability.
  • (6) The distribution of spectral energy among four types of infant vocalizations was compared via computerized spectral analyses of "pain-induced," "fussy," and "hungry" cries and "cooing" of 30 2-6-month-old infants.
  • (7) I just don't like Michelin-starred restaurants that are too fussy.
  • (8) You couldn’t do that today without calling it grooming, which I suspect the author would see as a piece of fussy editorialising with no place in fiction.
  • (9) "The display of works of art, for example, is to be fussy about what colour pictures are hung on - at what height they're hung.
  • (10) Overall 27% of children had febrile (greater than 38 degrees C) reactions, 62% became fussy and 79% had a local reaction.
  • (11) "Dyson Cinetic cyclones are so efficient at separating microscopic particles that everything gets thrust into the bin, and you can forget about fussy filters.” Ten years' of vacuuming According to Dyson’s testing, its new line of Cinetic cleaners can perform ten years’ worth of vacuum cleaning without needing to replace or wash their filters, which equates to sucking up two tonnes of dust.
  • (12) I inform them that I will be turning up with a set of index cards on which I have jotted down key points, but will not be boring my audience to tears with fiddly slides consisting of flying text, fussy fonts or photo montages.
  • (13) Parents were advised to seek prompt attention if symptoms of earache, fussiness, or fever recurred at any time during the 30-day study period.
  • (14) Analyses showed that female infants who were unable to complete the habituation task were reported as being more fussy and unadaptable.
  • (15) One famous product was Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup , a morphine and alcohol concoction that was marketed to parents of fussy children as a “perfectly harmless and pleasant” way to produce a “natural quiet sleep, by relieving the child from pain”.
  • (16) The remark catches his combination of asceticism and elegance: an American journalist once described him as "a haute-couture Gandalf", a wizard who is a little too fussy about his wardrobe.
  • (17) Visual inspection indicated that "pain-induced" cries could be differentiated from "fussy" and "hungry" cries and that "cooing" could be differentiated from all cries on the bases of (1) the relative amplitude levels of the high-frequency components; (2) the average fundamental frequency; and (3) the overall spectral energy levels.
  • (18) NOFT infants were found to be more fussy, demanding, and unsociable.
  • (19) It is concluded that prophylactic acetaminophen as given in this study had a moderating effect on fever, pain, and fussiness after diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis immunization.
  • (20) In the latter, he played Martin Bryce, a fussy busybody unusually preoccupied with law and order.

Pedantic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Pedantical

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.