Pedant

//ˈpɛdənt// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person who makes an excessive or tedious show of their knowledge, especially regarding rules of vocabulary and grammar.
  2. 2
    a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit wordnet
  3. 3
    A person who is overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.
  4. 4
    A teacher or schoolmaster. archaic

    "I have in my youth oftentimes beene vexed to see a Pedant [tr. pedante] brought in, in most of Italian comedies, for a vice or sport-maker, and the nicke-name of Magister to be of no better signification amongst us."

Verb
  1. 1
    To be or act as a pedant. humorous, rare

    "[…] as any occasion of going behond^([sic – meaning beyond]) the sea with sombody, or pedanting in some Gentlemans house, &c., for clergy-employment I will accept of none."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Pedantic. not-comparable

Synonyms

All synonyms
academeanal characterbabbittbluestockingbookwormbourgeois

Example

More examples

"The geometry teacher was a pedant."

Etymology

From Middle French pedant, pedante, from Italian pedante (“a teacher, schoolmaster, pedant”), associated with unrelated Italian pedagogo (“teacher, pedagogue”). Compare French pédant.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.