pedant :

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pedant


  • n  a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit

  • Before he became the general of the revolution, Lenin was its pedant, the journalist-scholar who married Marxist theory to an incisive analysis of insurrectionist tactics.
  • Much of the current concern about language is only a pedant's despair.
  • It seems just a slip of a thing, a pedant's tick, a blip on the edge of our consciousness, a kind of printer's smudge almost.
News & Articles

  • 9 Embarrassing Word Mistakes You're Probably Making
    If you’re using “I could care less” and “My head literally exploded” because you’re trying to affect a breezy manner, or you’re simply dashing off a casual e-mail, or you’re a learned linguist trying to show how just-folks you are, or your head literally exploded, go right ahead. It's likely you'll be subjected to the contempt of a pedant.
    July 9, 2013 - The Oklahoman
Quotes

  • Roger Rees in San Mateo County Times
    He wrote plays to make money and have a living in theater; it's worth remembering he was not a pedant,says Roger Rees (pictured).
  • Virginia Woolf in Hindu
    As Virginia Woolf writes: "Every day she made theories by which life should be lived; and every day she came smack against the rock of other people's prejudices. Every day too - for she was no pedant, no cold-blooded theorist - something was born in...
  • Ben Jonson in guardian.co.uk
    He loves to have a fencer, a pedant and a musician seen in his lodgings,Ben Jonson wrote in 1599, with no indication that the pedant was any less to be honoured than his companions.

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