pedantic — pedantic, academic, scholastic, bookish are comparable as terms of derogation applied to thinkers, scholars, and learned men and their utterances. Pedantic often implies ostentatious display of knowledge, didacticism, and stodg iness {his… … New Dictionary of Synonyms
Pedantic — Pe*dan tic, Pedantical Pe*dan tic*al, a. Of or pertaining to a pedant; characteristic of, or resembling, a pedant; ostentatious of learning; as, a pedantic writer; a pedantic description; a pedantical affectation. Figures pedantical. Shak. [1913… … The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
pedantic — index dogmatic, inflated (bombastic), learned, sesquipedalian Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 … Law dictionary
pedantic — formed in English c.1600, from PEDANT (Cf. pedant) + IC (Cf. ic). The French equivalent is pédantesque. Perhaps first attested in John Donne s Sunne Rising, where he bids the morning sun let his love and him linger in bed, telling it, Sawcy… … Etymology dictionary
pedantic — [adj] bookish, precise abstruse, academic, arid, didactic, doctrinaire, donnish, dry, dull, egotistic, erudite, formal, fussy, hairsplitting*, learned, nit picking, ostentatious, overnice, particular, pedagogic, pompous, priggish*, punctilious,… … New thesaurus
pedantic — pe|dan|tic [pıˈdæntık] adj paying too much attention to rules or to small unimportant details pedantic about ▪ Some people can be very pedantic about punctuation. >pedantically [ kli] adv … Dictionary of contemporary English
pedantic — [[t]pɪdæ̱ntɪk[/t]] ADJ GRADED (disapproval) If you think someone is pedantic, you mean that they are too concerned with unimportant details or traditional rules, especially in connection with academic subjects. His lecture was so pedantic and… … English dictionary
pedantic — I (New American Roget s College Thesaurus) adj. precise, formal, narrow; bookish, stilted; affected, sophomoric. See affectation. II (Roget s IV) modif. Syn. formal, precise, pompous, ostentatious of learning, pedagogic, punctilious, bookish,… … English dictionary for students
pedantic — adjective paying too much attention to rules and details: He was meticulous, but never pedantic. pedantically / kli/ adverb … Longman dictionary of contemporary English
pedantic — adjective a pedantic interpretation of the rules Syn: overscrupulous, scrupulous, precise, exact, perfectionist, punctilious, meticulous, fussy, fastidious, finicky; dogmatic, purist, literalist, literalistic, formalist; casuistic, casuistical,… … Thesaurus of popular words