pedantry

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ped·ant·ry

(pĕd′n-trē)

n. pl. ped·ant·ries

1. The ostentatious display of academic knowledge, or undue attention paid to minor details or formal rules: His detailed research was dismissed as pedantry.

2. An instance of pedantic behavior: grew tired of his pedantries.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

pedantry

(ˈpɛdəntrɪ)

n, pl -ries

the habit or an instance of being a pedant, esp in the display of useless knowledge or minute observance of petty rules or details

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ped•ant•ry

(ˈpɛd n tri)

n., pl. ped•ant•ries.

1. the character, qualities, or practices of a pedant, esp. undue display of learning.

2. slavish attention to formal rules or minute details.

3. an instance of being pedantic.

[1575–85; < Italian pedanteria]

pedantry

pedanticism, def. 2.

pedantry

noun

1. hairsplitting, quibbling, pomposity, sophistry, punctiliousness, finickiness, pettifoggery, finicality, overnicety The results of the survey are exhaustive to the point of pedantry.

2. stuffiness, pomposity, intellectualism, pretentiousness, bookishness, donnishness, pedagogism The novel suffers from pedantry and dullness.

Quotations
"Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge" [Holbrook Jackson Anatomy of Bibliomania]

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

تَحَذْلُق، إدّعاء المَعْرِفَه

pedanteriepuntičkářství

ordkløveripedanteri

Pedanterie

σχολαστικότητα

pedantería

pedanttisuuspikkutarkkuusrikkiviisaussaivarteluviisastelu

pédanterie

pedantériatudálékosság

smámunasemi

pedanteria pignoleria

pedanteri pirk

puntičkárstvo

ukalâlık

卖弄学问迂腐

pedantry

[ˈpedəntrɪ] N → pedantería f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

pedantry

n → Pedanterie f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

pedantry

[ˈpɛdəntrɪ] n → pedanteria

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

pedant

(ˈpedənt) noun

1. a person who makes a great show of his knowledge.

2. a person who attaches too much importance to minor details.

peˈdantic (-ˈdӕn-) adjective

peˈdantically adverb

ˈpedantry noun

Mentioned in ?

References in classic literature ?

Pardon the pedantry of a Latin quotation, and believe me,

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Tall, handsome, and finely-formed, she was a good musician, drew and painted, spoke several languages, and even knew something of science,--a dangerous advantage, which requires a woman to avoid carefully all appearance of pedantry. Blinded by mistaken tenderness, the mother gave the daughter false ideas as to her probable future; to the maternal eyes a duke or an ambassador, a marshal of France or a minister of State, could alone give her Celestine her due place in society.

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In order to escape the imputation of pedantry we shall render the substance, and, so far as it is possible, the form of the dialogue that succeeded, into the English tongue.

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The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom.

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I felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit.

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Fyne's opinions had a large freedom in their pedantry. She held, I suppose, that a woman holds an absolute right--or possesses a perfect excuse--to escape in her own way from a man-mismanaged world.

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He carried his scholarship, however, to the point of pedantry, not only in the illustrative extracts from Latin authors with which in the printed edition he filled the lower half of his pages, but in the plays themselves in the scrupulous exactitude of his rendering of the details of Roman life.

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Babcock's tender conscience seemed to him a capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get into a deeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and ludicrously just.

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Julius Laspara no doubt knew which of his girls it was who, after casually vanishing for a few years, had as casually returned to him possessed of that child; but, with admirable pedantry, he had refrained from asking her for details--no, not so much as the name of the father, because maternity should be an anarchist function.

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I wonder now that I did not see how my physician avoided his medicine, but I did not, and I went on to spend myself in an endeavor as vain and senseless as any that pedantry has conceived.

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His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism, and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension.

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By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.