Pedantry
A pedant is a person who is excessively concerned with formalism and precision, or who makes a show of his or her learning.
Quotes
- A Man who has been brought up among Books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is what we call a Pedant. But, methinks, we should enlarge the Title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his Profession and particular way of Life.
- Joseph Addison, Spectator 1711. [1]
- Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgements of one another.
- "The term, then, is obviously a relative one: my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education and someone else’s ignorance.
- H. W. Fowler, Modern English Usage
- "The only other thing is that I am a pendant when it comes to written English and I would like to proof-read anything that can viewed outside the company." - Garty Vicksters
- "The pedant is he who finds it impossible to read criticism of himself without immediately reaching for his pen and replying to the effect that the accusation is a gross insult to his person. He is, in effect, a man unable to laugh at himself."—Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id.
- "Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and sot"—Thomas Macaulay, describing James Boswell
- "Pedantic, I?"—Alexei Sayle
- "If you're the kind of person who insists on this or that 'correct' use... abandon your pedantry as I did mine. Dive into the open flowing waters and leave the stagnant canals be... Above all, let there be pleasure!"—Stephen Fry
