as in teachers
disapproving
a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details
They found the professor to be a dull pedant more concerned with the intricacies of punctuation than the craft of writing.
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Recent Examples of pedants
Medieval schoolmen worrying over Aristotle could be pedants; so could cultivated female salonnières in seventeenth-century Paris.
—
Clare Bucknell, The New York Review of Books, 25 Apr. 2026
As botanists and pedants will tell you, figs are technically a flower, not a fruit.
—Emily Saladino, Bon Appetit Magazine, 20 Sep. 2025
Clare Bucknell, The New York Review of Books, 25 Apr. 2026
As botanists and pedants will tell you, figs are technically a flower, not a fruit.
—Emily Saladino, Bon Appetit Magazine, 20 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pedants
teachers
Noun
-
And grants to districts to train teachers or recruit school mental health workers have been discontinued for mentions of diversity in recruitment.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
3 June 2026
-
So was Walnut Creek School District’s Measure L, which asked voters to approve an annual $98 per parcel tax for nine years, which the district said would be used to attract and retain teachers, fund academic programs and maintain class sizes.—
Molly Gibbs,
Mercury News,
3 June 2026
Cite this Entry
“Pedants.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pedants. Accessed 7 Jun. 2026.
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