(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(3) He said localness remained key to small stations' success, but added that regulation should move away from "outdated" and "pedantic" box-ticking to focus on output rather than input.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.
Purist
Definition:
(n.) One who aims at excessive purity or nicety, esp. in the choice of language.
(n.) One who maintains that the New Testament was written in pure Greek.
Example Sentences:
(1) Cynics will tell you Camra’s membership know all about identity crises – once the rebels of the 1970s, they’re now mostly older dads and grandads – purists upholding Camra’s “cask only” creed as sacred.
(2) But there are two problems for Turkey's entry Düm Tek Tek: linguistic purists will be angry that the song is in English except for the title; and some more traditional members of the national juries and televoters will be offended by Turkey's crop-top aesthetic.
(3) He frequently used the sounds and rhythms of dubstep – which by 2011 was nearing the peak of its explosive global rise – royally enraging the scene's purists, who were already struggling to cope with "their" sound spilling into the mainstream and picked him as scapegoat.
(4) No: people want to see live animals!” The purists will grumble.
(5) Quite right too, purists would say: Hinkley Point is already hideously expensive.
(6) The hip-hop world has become dominated by styles such as drill and trap, and their preoccupation with drug dealing and womanising, with the purists' calls for a return to hip-hop's golden era drowned out by Lex Luger's snares and Gucci Mane 's endless chants of "burrrrr".
(7) And rather than to the purists of Camra, it was to the anything-goes craft brewers of America that many turned for their inspiration: to exuberant beers with exotic ingredients (chilli, honey, chocolate, hemp, mustard, even myrrh), but also to hip design, guerrilla marketing and social media savvy.
(8) What might be even less acceptable to purists are the ballpark traditions that have sprung up around Fenway recently.
(9) Early celebrating is a serious violation of baseball protocol to some purists.
(10) Eric Gordon, director of Emerson College's Engagement Lab in Boston, takes a more purist approach.
(11) The 1995 Judge Dredd movie , starring Sylvester Stallone, angered some purists because he took his helmet off.
(12) If he gets there, at 32, in two such daunting matches, acclaim will have to flow, but there will be trouble from the purists.
(13) I know lots of purist Conservatives say this is not something the Tory party should do,” he says.
(14) The purists will brook no such change, insisting Republicans must stay true to their small government, socially conservative message.
(15) I was kind of hoping they might manage a reprise of their purist-bothering act at Euro 2004, only on the biggest stage of all.
(16) The bedroom tones of Verity Sharp and Fiona Talkington have enticed a cult audience to the late-night Radio 3 show, which jumps from Indian classical to American post-rock to British early music with an audacious rapidity that regularly outrages musical purists.
(17) It can be demonstrated that puristic ideologies tend to be inhumane.
(18) Though such innovations are anathema to many purist climbers, some Sherpas welcome them.
(19) As a purist I would love the fighters to be able to kick the head of a downed opponent,” he says.
(20) It might be less deadly than it was, and the miles of fixed ropes appal climbing purists, who say it’s not real mountaineering, but it’s still a dangerous, acutely uncomfortable environment that could end up killing you.