(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(3) He said localness remained key to small stations' success, but added that regulation should move away from "outdated" and "pedantic" box-ticking to focus on output rather than input.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.
Stickler
Definition:
(v. t.) One who stickles.
(v. t.) One who arbitrates a duel; a sidesman to a fencer; a second; an umpire.
(v. t.) One who pertinaciously contends for some trifling things, as a point of etiquette; an unreasonable, obstinate contender; as, a stickler for ceremony.
Example Sentences:
(1) Schwartz was a stickler for historical detail, which, combined with Friedman's vision of a unifying structure for tracing the effects of monetary developments on the economy, led to an entertaining work that changed our view of how the macroeconomy worked.
(2) These findings suggest that, at least in some families, the mutation causing Stickler syndrome affects the structural locus for type II collagen.
(3) (A little later, I watch director Foley ask a genially menacing professor Capaldi to lift, and lift, and lift, the needle from a record in, I think it was, 12 different ways, to get it just so; I think "stickler" is fair.)
(4) The ocular histopathologic findings in three patients with the Stickler syndrome from two families included the following: total retinal detachment with marked folding, disorganization of the retina, and a preretinal membrane.
(5) The phone-hacking trial has thrown up many nibblettes of celebrity ephemera, but perhaps the most extraordinary latest reveal is that Her Majesty is a stickler for her snacks .
(6) The total LOD score for linkage of the Stickler syndrome and COL2A1 at a recombination fraction (theta) of zero is 3.59.
(7) A three generation family with Stickler syndrome is reported.
(8) The Stickler syndrome is an autosomal dominant hereditary disorder of connective tissue with pleiotropic features including premature osteoarthropathy, mild spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, vitreoretinal degeneration, and the Pierre-Robin sequence.
(9) They deplore the loss of ancient liturgy and Latin; they are sticklers for the rules, especially on sexual morality, and prize top-down authority over individual conscience.
(10) Our experience suggests that the Stickler syndrome is not rare.
(11) Because of the growing list of complications associated with mitral-valve prolapse, all patients with Stickler syndrome should be evaluated by auscultation, electrocardiogram, and echocardiography.
(12) That the Chinese, normally sticklers for protocol, agreed showed Xi was more open than his predecessors, Ruan Zongze, a vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, a thinktank linked to the Chinese foreign ministry, told Reuters.
(13) Stickler's syndrome is a congenital disease of connective tissue with considerable ocular and non-ocular lesions.
(14) My mother is a stickler for tidiness and that has come in handy.
(15) Stickler syndrome may be underrecognized by rheumatologists, particularly if the significance of nonarticular clinical features or a positive family history are not appreciated.
(16) A family is described illustrating diverse expressions of Stickler syndrome, including abnormalities not directly attributable to mutation of the type II procollagen gene.
(17) BBC staffers not already familiar with their new boss may also like to know that he is a stickler for punctuality.
(18) Hereditary Arthro-ophthalmopathy (The Stickler Syndrome) is a relatively common dominantly inherited disorder of connective tissue.
(19) The once scruffy youth became a stickler for sartorial decorum.
(20) We report the occurrence of progressive Brown-Séquard syndrome as the presenting clinical feature of cervical spondylosis in a young patient with Stickler's syndrome.