Pedant

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pedant \Ped"ant\, n. [F. p['e]dant, It. pedante, fr. Gr.
     paidey`ein to instruct, from pai^s boy. See {Pedagogue}.]
     1. A schoolmaster; a pedagogue. [Obs.] --Dryden.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              A pedant that keeps a school i'th' church. --Shak.


        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain
        display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge.
        --Addison.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              A scholar, yet surely no pedant, was he.
                                                    --Goldsmith.
        [1913 Webster] Pedantic

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  pedant
       n : a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book
           learning than they merit [syn: {bookworm}, {scholastic}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  39 Moby Thesaurus words for "pedant":
     Babbitt, Gongorist, Marinist, Middle American, Philistine,
     anal character, bluestocking, bourgeois, burgher,
     compulsive character, conformer, conformist, conventionalist,
     euphuist, fine writer, formalist, methodologist, middle-class type,
     model child, organization man, parrot, perfectionist, phrasemaker,
     phraseman, phrasemonger, plastic person, precieuse, precieux,
     precisian, precisianist, precisionist, purist, rhetorician, sheep,
     square, teenybopper, trimmer, wordspinner, yes-man