# pedantic

Pronunciation: say "puh-DAN-tik" /pəˈdæn.tɪk/

## Adjective

1. Overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning, in the way a pedant is.
   - Simple: Caring too much about small rules and details that do not really matter.
   - _The professor was so pedantic about citation format that students lost points for a misplaced comma._
   - _Arguing over whether the century began in 2000 or 2001 seemed pedantic to everyone but Paul._
2. Inclined to display one's knowledge, often in a way that others find tiresome.
   - Simple: Liking to show how much you know, often in a boring way.
   - _His pedantic lecture was crammed with Latin quotations that no one in the room could follow._
   - _The essay's style is pedantic, piling up obscure references to prove how widely the author has read._

## Origin

Formed from pedant and the suffix -ic.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/pedantic (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).