Both Uses of
pedantic
in
The Communist Manifesto
- This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.†
*pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- 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.†
pedantry = being too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
Definition:
too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning