All 16 Uses
pedantic
in
The American Language, by Mencken
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- That it should be regarded as an anti-social act to examine and exhibit the constantly growing differences between English and American, as certain American pedants argue sharply—this doctrine is quite beyond my understanding.†
*pedants = people too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- His attacks upon certain familiar pedantries of the grammarians were penetrating and effective, and his two books, "The Standard of Usage in English" and "The Standard of Pronunciation in English," not to mention his excellent "History of the English Language" and his numerous magazine articles, showed a profound knowledge of the early development of the language, and an admirable spirit of free inquiry.†
- It is full of what Bret Harte called the "sabre-cuts of Saxon"; it meets Montaigne's ideal of "a succulent and nervous speech, short and compact, not as much delicated and combed out as vehement and brusque, rather arbitrary than monotonous, not pedantic but soldierly, as Suetonius called Caesar's Latin."†
pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- The colonial pedants denounced /to advocate/ as bitterly as they ever denounced /to compromit/ or /to happify/, and all the English authorities gave them aid, but it forced itself into the American language despite them, and today it is even accepted as English and has got into the Oxford Dictionary.†
pedants = people too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- But in the colonies the process went on unimpeded, save for the feeble protests of such stray pedants as Witherspoon and Boucher.†
- Even the pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore, uses /but that/.†
pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- But before the end the author begins to succumb to precedent, and on page 114 I find [Pg182] paragraph after paragraph of such dull, flyblown pedantry as this: Some Intransitive Verbs are used to link the Subject and some Adjective or Noun.†
pedantry = being too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- [12] Most of the current efforts at improvement, in fact, tend toward a mere revision and multiplication of classifications; the pedant is eternally convinced that pigeon-holing and relabelling are contributions to knowledge†
pedant = someone too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- [13] The aim of this pamphlet is to rid the teaching of English, including grammar, of its accumulated formalism and ineffectiveness—to make it genuine instruction instead of a pedantic and meaningless routine†
pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- The art of prose has little to do with the stiff and pedantic English taught in grammar-schools and a great deal less to do with the loose and lively English spoken by the average American in his daily traffic.†
- And the use of /illy/ is confined to pedants.†
pedants = people too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- But in England, during the pedantic eighteenth century, this /i/-sound was displaced by the original /oi/-sound, not by historical research but by mere deduction from the spelling, and the new pronunciation soon extended to the polite speech of America.†
pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- This /e/-sound was once accepted in standard English; when it got into spoken American it was perfectly sound; one still hears it from the most pedantic lips in /any/.†
- Webster, in one of his earlier books, denounced the /k/ in /skeptic/ as "a mere pedantry," but later on he adopted it.†
pedantry = being too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
- Lounsbury, less pedantic, viewed its phenomena more hospitably, and even defined it as "the source from which the decaying energies of speech are constantly refreshed," and Brander Matthews, following him, has described its function as that of providing "substitutes for the good words and true which are worn out by hard service."†
pedantic = with excessive concern for formal rules, details, or book learning
- "/awful/ weather" and "an /awful/ job" have entirely sound support, and no one save a pedant would hesitate to use them.†
pedant = someone too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
Definitions:
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(1)
(pedantic) too concerned with formal rules, details, or book learning
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) In historic literature, you may see pedant used as a synonym for school teacher.