How To Use Pedantic In A Sentence

this also means that the 9-volt is the only battery in the grocery stores that is actually a *battery*, i.e. a plurality of separate cells working together, rather than a single cell. you can make a lot of friends in the world by saying, "i don't like to be pedantic, but that AA really isn't a battery, you know; just a cell. Making Light: Making light under difficult conditions
Again, it seems pedantic to quibble about the differences between strikers and attacking midfielders. Times, Sunday Times
I had the same middle parted haircut for eight years, and I was quite pedantic about this being perfect.
She points out that there is some irony in living in a "Lake House" without a lake and even though, as I pedantically remind her, the word lake is Anglo-Saxon for "running stream," which we do have, and not a standing body of water, which we don't, her logic does not escape me. Broken Music, A Memoir
Not only was I tired, but listening to the same pedantic metaphysical reasoning for the second time from my friend, normally a lively conversationist, bored me out of my skull. An East Wind Coming

The hatred of the pedantic is the characteristic sentiment of the time. English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century
It took at least five minutes before the wearisome, pedantical fellow had finished his arrangements and preparations. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844
I'm not saying that ethics committees that question research proposals are always being pedantic.
No wonder some find his music insufferably boring and pedantic.
The dogmatic resistance to entrenchment would raise its arid and pedantic head.
Not two sentences into their answer the terms pedantic and didactic were employed with professorial authority. Build Blog » A Vocabulary List for Architects Who Want to Get Things Built
However much he might mock the pedantic generic confusions of the ‘pastoral, tragical comical’ theatre of his predecessors, Shakespeare was their heir.
You should all be ‘pedantic old farts’ about unambiguity in words, because no-one else is going to stop them from becoming completely malleable (or, put another way - completely meaningless.)
these interpretations are called `schemas' or, more pedantically, `schemata'
Any fool can be pedantic and snipe at what they think are minor errors in grammar.
But this is a rather pedantic approach. Times, Sunday Times
We've already had the delightful suggestion of 'precisian'; now we have 'doryphore' - 'a pedantic critic of minor errors; a nitpicker'. Times, Sunday Times
There was one pedantic point that really annoyed me about this book: Arcturus is spelt incorrectly throughout, missing the first 'r'. May Books 19) Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The negotiations are now down to detail that might seem pedantic elsewhere. Times, Sunday Times
This can seem a lot of work, pedantic and fussy but is truly worth it if you can manage.
Yet such is the established way of things that it seems almost pedantic to be pointing this out. Times, Sunday Times
The rule which I have tried to follow has been this: when the word has been hopelessly Latinised, as 'Phoebus' has been, I have left it as it usually stands; but in other cases I have tried to keep the plain Greek spelling, except when it would have seemed pedantic, or when, as in the word 'Tiphus,' I should have given an altogether wrong notion of the sound of the word. Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children
I have language skills, I'm pedantic to stupendous heights, computer literate and I can fire and strip a pistol.
His pedantic freakish oration and the inerudite suppositions of his talk made my jaw drop! WordPress.com News
X. plays skilfully and correctly, but his expression continues crude, cold, monotonous; he shows too pedantic a solicitude about mechanical execution and strict time; he never ventures on a _pp. _, uses too little shading in _piano_, and plays the _forte_ too heavily, and without regard to the instrument; his _crescendi_ and _diminuendi_ are inappropriate, often coarse and brought in at unsuitable places; and -- his _ritardandi_! they are tedious indeed! Piano and Song How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of Musical Performances
They were being unnecessarily pedantic by insisting that Berry himself, and not his wife, should have made the announcement.
But probably the whole prodigious mass of classic lore, and of scriptural quotation, even more unfamiliar to most of his hearers, which the pedantic president forced upon the digestion of the unfortunate notables, was required to prove to their satisfaction that Francis had in this affair played the part of the "gentilhomme" he boasted of being. The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2)
He is learned, but neither stuffy nor pedantic.
Ethan, the danger in being pedantic is that you have to set a good example. Speaking of schadenfreude: Meanwhile, in the German elections « BuzzMachine
Long-winded sentences and pedantic phraseology have yielded place to brief reports.
Sorry to be pedantic but it really irked me for some reason.
They tend to make your style heavy, dry, and pedantic.
Sorry, I was just being pedantic about the word pedantic, noticing **in general** how people use the term and their topsy-turvy sense of priorities seem to be. Phi Beta Kappa + masters degree = instant Etruscanist
Time could not be wasted on pedantic evidence sifting. Times, Sunday Times
There are a very few words - brock, for badger being one, combe, meaning a deep valley, and which appears in some English village names and in contemporary Welsh, another, torr, a mountain peak - which seem to have survived, at least among those who speak preciously or somewhat pedantically today. Excerpt: The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester
Perhaps this is the wrong forum on which to be so pedantic, but this is something that has bothered me for a while.
They speak in an overprecise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially Hs.
Call me a pedantic, stubborn, value for money freak, but don't call me unhearing.
His comfortable view was that “the sensible and interesting conversations of a woman of merit are more proper to form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of books [97].” Rousseau
I then went to bed, resolving my first business in the morning should be to discharge this troublesome, pedantic, self-conceited coxcomb, who seemed so much disposed to constitute himself rather a preceptor than a domestic. Rob Roy
His lecture was so pedantic and uninteresting.
Writing was his favourite pastime, pedantic, unpoetic stuff dealing with politics, history, education.
I still think meaning would warrant pluralisation in edited writing; “meanings of words” has a slightly pedantic feel, but it helps underline the point that words carry multiple mutable meanings. National Grammar Day 2010: Ten More Common Grammar Myths, Debunked « Motivated Grammar
My dictionary defines a pedagogue as a pedantic or dogmatic teacher and there is a lot of that about Waters.
Egregious typos in pedantic language post = auto-pwn. Matthew Yglesias » Health Care Plan Getting More Popular
Starting off in the seedy clubs and backdoor whiskey bars of Sunset Strip, writers will embrace their inner straight male lesbians and put on the fishnet stockings, friz their hair, and learn to type in falsetto to blazing riffs, tricky hooks, and pedantic sililoquies that would make Slash blush. LOST Waves Back at Fans of the Nerd Persuasion
But this is true, that of the methods of common-places that I have seen, there is none of any sufficient worth, all of them carrying merely the face of a school and not of a world; and referring to vulgar matters and pedantical divisions, without all life or respect to action. The Advancement of Learning
_refuted; redargued_, the alternative word, was felt to be pedantic. The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
Ha, true, but then we'd have to argue over, since it's not just normal pedantic but * super pedantic*, whether my argument-escape-hatch/weasel words 'pretty close' cover my ass. ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science
After all, if we all stayed pedantically committed to our initial interests and behavioural patterns life would seem an awful lot longer and drearier than it presently does. Dear Mariella: I do yoga, which makes my boyfriend reckon that I've joined a cult. Can we get past this?
There are moments in Bach when I would accuse him of nimiety, a pedantic thoroughness, more artifice than art.
They would become even more bureaucratic and even more pedantic.
There's simply no way around the system: it's pedantic, laboured and mind-numbingly frustrating.
This can seem a lot of work, pedantic and fussy but is truly worth it if you can manage.
Deeply attached to old values, and seeing the rapidly changing world about him through the distorting lens of a pedantic and snobbish literary tradition, Libanius was vain, petty, and wrapped in finicking antiquarianism.
To affirm that Robespierre was a pedantic "swotter" is not to reveal the causes of his absolute power over the Convention, at a time when he had spent several months in decimating it with perfect impunity. The Psychology of Revolution
The administrators must simplify the process and tell referees to be less pedantic. Times, Sunday Times
I shall never upgrade, you misanthropic bile spewing pedantical tosser! It’s No Name-Calling Week, mofos! « raincoaster
The way I practice witchcraft has changed a lot, I'm a lot less pedantic now, I'm a lot more intuitive.
It is entirely appropriate that I have been accused of being pedantic when reviewing certain cryptozoological works. Archive 2006-04-01
Being a pedantic word-lover, and yes, a feminist, this drives me berserk.
Now, the ethically-minded man is not a pedantic micrologist who wastes his time on the minutiae of conduct. The Essentials of Spirituality
Fowler is not alone in rejecting octopi; some linguists do so on the grounds that octopus was not originally a Latin word but a Greek one – hence the pedantic plural octopodes, which is rarely if ever seen outside dictionaries, usage guides, and blog posts such as the one you are reading. Octopuses, octopi and oktopodes
Pedantically speaking, there is no similar conversion for objects.
I was under the impression that this was a forum where political issues could be discussed rationally: if you want me to be pedantic and point out every logical fallacy in every reply I've received then I'll do that.
For example, there are about fifty pages in the middle somewhere that are entirely concerned with the lovers' financial imbroglios, related with all the vim of a pedantic tax accountant working his way along a paper trail.
[2056] Because they are rich, and have other means to live, they think it concerns them not to know, or to trouble themselves with it; a fitter task for younger brothers, or poor men's sons, to be pen and inkhorn men, pedantical slaves, and no whit beseeming the calling of a gentleman, as Frenchmen and Anatomy of Melancholy
Donoghue's a true historian, whose period detail is exacting enough to please the most pedantic of pedants, while her style displays an intimacy with the past that's both unpretentious and modern.
You can be too pedantic about grammar and pronunciation and you can probably tell from this that spelling is a problem for me, especially when typing.
As a plaudit, "recently established definitive Russian text" may sound like a pedantic mouthful, but Platonov is anything but a writer of merely academic interest. A Different Stripe:
L lost sight of what they were debating about and focussed instead on being pedantic (contrary to your opinion, Lucretia, that is not a very professional debating tactic). Sex and the single Marvel super heroine | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment
While it's probably true that the word "galoot" derived from a slur for African galley slaves, I would see it as ungracious and pedantic to bring this up with the implication that the person so informed must avoid the term for fear of transgressing the bounds of tolerance and responsibility. Friday Night Open Thread: Comics
They were being unnecessarily pedantic by insisting that Berry himself, and not his wife, should have made the announcement.
It must be confessed, however, that it is generally avoided in print, while the form that we have ventured to call pedantic is not uncommon. Case.
They were pedantic disciples who united with all the affectations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, and the outcome was a bastard style inferior to the earlier schools -- childish, stiff, and crude in color, with no sense of light and shade. Holland, v. 1 (of 2)
Again, it seems pedantic to quibble about the differences between strikers and attacking midfielders. Times, Sunday Times
We thought he was a bit pedantic at times. The Sun
A vain man, a soldier and a scholar, pedantic, irritable, but in earnest; a complimenter of Emperors, a leader of the reform party, a partisan of Luther's, the friend and correspondent of Erasmus, the elective brother of Dürer. Albert Durer
My dictionary defines a pedagogue as a pedantic or dogmatic teacher and there is a lot of that about Waters.
A Ph.D. is quite unnecessary in order to be academic in this sense, just as one does not have to be a scholar in order to be pedantical. Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism
In order not to sound too didactic or pedantic, the lecturer added anecdotes and personal comments.
These will include essays on contemporary fiction that are indeed a tad too scholarly (some might say "pedantic") or just too long for ordinary blog posts, as well as other surveys or discussionsofcritical books and articles onpost-1980 fiction. Out of the Ashes
Weds Letters), I would suggest the expression for responding to a post, when even as you're writing, you suspect they just put it there to provoke the kind of fusty response you're now drafting, but you're just too pedantic to stop yourself commenting, should be known as post-imprissionism. BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition
By this means, small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c. that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and "thorough reformations" that can happen between this and English Satires
At this point, the auteur's films felt fairly strained and pedantic.
It was pedantic rather than reasonable, just to the point of being grotesque.
The past few articles I have written for this site have been pedantic responses to articles written by others.
They were being unnecessarily pedantic by insisting that Berry himself, and not his wife, should have made the announcement.
It is not merely a pedantic question - although there is much to be said for scientists providing an honest portrayal of their figures.
Consider, too, how a holiday of action would disenthral the writer from the pettiness of cliques and coteries, with their pedantic atmosphere and false perspectives. Without Prejudice
P.S. The other (pedantic) point, which I forgot to make, is that you counterexample isn't really a counterexample to the theory - if only because the theory is almost tautologically true: what is a "high status group" other than a group which people have positive feelings towards and want to identify with? What, Me Rich?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Cricket has a reputation for its confusing, pedantic rules.
Not the least among its recommendations is, perhaps, that it is scholarly without being pedantic that is to say, that it aims at correctness without sacrificing the right effect of the whole to over-insistence on small details. The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
Some would argue that this is both pedantic and unrealistic, since money is fungible and one £10 note is for all purposes the same as another.
Again, it seems pedantic to quibble about the differences between strikers and attacking midfielders. Times, Sunday Times
For years, pedantic scholars have crowed about the debt rock owes the blues.
In these each aspirant's contribution was judged, in conformity with strict, somewhat pedantic rules, on his song's sacred content: its prosody, its rhyme, and its melody.
Except for a brief but pithy description of how to make secret du crapaud, a particularly vile poison made from a toad, that was taken almost entirely from primary sources, this was one of the dullest and most pedantic books I have ever read. An open letter to academia
Miheng,Being famous for his abusive ability, pedantic intellectual as the tongue steel,who couldn't compare to Zhuge liang with such ability,momentum,well-grounded in abuse.
During the English Renaissance, language purists and nationalists resisted the influx of pedantic and recondite inkhorn terms adapted from Greek and Latin such as condisciple, splendidious, and adnichilate. VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VII No 1
The good ones are fun and clever; the bad ones humourless and pedantic.
Some may dismiss this episode as a pedantic storm in a teacup. Times, Sunday Times
In order not to sound too didactic or pedantic, the lecturer added anecdotes and personal comments.
Welding punked-out, ska, psycho-rap backfilled with wailing metal dirges, Bad Acid Trip surge pedantically from whimsical to venomous in one foul breath.
`Well, it was only... The receptionist said Dr McIntosh would come -- "She heard her voice, pedantic, fussy. THE GOLDEN LION
We apologise to our more pedantic readers for the absence of a cedilla on the word ‘soupcon’. But do you really think I've got time to write this drivel and go the Windows Character Map to look for French accents?
They were being unnecessarily pedantic by insisting that Berry himself, and not his wife, should have made the announcement.
Well you could say it's a deal of nitpicking by pedantic scientists over detail.
If, occasionally, his run-on sentences tax your patience and his scrupulous accuracy verges on pedantic, nit-picking neurosis, you never feel like giving up on him - he's too exhilarating.
The "marivaudage" of Marivaux is sometimes a refined and novel mode of expressing delicate shades and half-shades of feeling; sometimes an over-refined or over-subtle attempt to express ingenuities of sentiment, and the result is then frigid, pretentious, or pedantic. A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II.
The latter had only one side, and therefore — plurally and pedantically speaking — NO SIDES. Flatland: a romance of many dimensions
It would be pedantic to claim instead that inequality has disvalue.
Some companies don't like dealing with this inspector because they say he's draconian and pedantic.
That movie was tender and affectionate without being pedantic.
One should hasten to say, however, that over-nicety in enunciation, pedantic exactness, obtrusive "elocutionary" excellence, or any sort of labored or affected effort should be carefully guarded against. Public Speaking
Exhibition galleries are often dark and dusty, guidebooks and recordings pedantic, dining facilities basic, toilets insalubrious and bookshops poorly stocked. The Joy of Museums That Live in the Past
There is in a grave disposition, when carried to the point of stiffness and ill-grace toward women, something coarsely pedantic, that is unbecoming in great talents and ridiculous in lesser ones. Led Astray and The Sphinx Two Novellas In One Volume
Maybe its the blatancy of how outrageous her lyrics and videos are that it seems impossibly pedantic to dislike it. Sexualized Violence in a Lady Gaga Video » Sociological Images
Still, it is clearly pedantic to avoid the obvious by clothing it in befogged terminology, as one might by writing arenaceous or sabulous for sandy, immund for dirty, nates for buttocks, or venenate for poison (vb.). VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 3
No childhood is complete until it has watched their sloomy and impassive faces munching against the glass, and seen the gradual egress (as the encyclopædia pedantically puts it) of their tender limbs, the growing froggishness of their demeanour. Plum Pudding Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned
One of the few rational things I have met with, Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable pet Mr. Carlyle -- though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed me to read much -- is the remark that 'speech is silver' -- 'silvern' he calls it, pedantically -- 'while silence is golden.' Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet An Autobiography
There are a very few words - brock, for badger being one, combe, meaning a deep valley, and which appears in some English village names and in contemporary Welsh, another, torr, a mountain peak - which seem to have survived, at least among those who speak preciously or somewhat pedantically today. Excerpt: The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester
So one of our tenets has been to be almost pedantic about process. Times, Sunday Times
The classics, it is generally agreed, are a repository of class vanity, racial prejudice and pedantic obscurantism.
With out wanting to be pedantic "Celtic" isn't actually the language its called Gaelic yeah gay-lick . /Filmcast Ep. 62 - G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra (GUEST: Matt Singer from IFC News) | /Film
It is surely impossible for any impartial critic to contend that the unlucky novelist's devotion to the class of subjects referred to, and his manner of handling them, did not amount to what has been pedantically, but accurately, termed an "obsession of the _lupanar_. A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century
We tend to become either pedantically descriptive or abstractly emotive, or both.
Poor Saint-Rene Taillandier is as asininely pedantic as the The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters
This year, it seems likely that a number of my fellow countrymen will be spending a good deal of time pedantically pursuing punctuation rules and grumbling at grammatical solecisms.
Time could not be wasted on pedantic evidence sifting. Times, Sunday Times
You are indeed being pedantic, and while I'm a big fan of pedantry in its place, I try to write for the general reader, who would have no idea what "Inuktitut" means. Languagehat.com: LANGUAGE GUESSER.
Elizabeth readily acknowledged this dependence, albeit in characteristically pedantic fashion. From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516-1558
For years, pedantic scholars have crowed about the debt rock owes the blues.
Usoltsev portrays him as an ambivalent ironist—modern in outlook, aware of the corrosion within the Soviet system, a little pedantically legalistic, even, at times, democratic in outlook, but careful to hide any incorrect attitudes in public and skilled at ingratiating himself with his superiors. The Return
The voice is pedantic and apostrophic - O reader, hearken to my tale - and imbued with a faux-archaism that suggests the curlicued Georgian efforts of young Robin Hyde.
I fear I was sadly pedantical," said I, overcome with confusion at the memory. David Balfour, a sequel to Kidnapped.
he was captiously pedantic
Sorry to be a pedantic dick about it, but the real fake genitive plural of "Elvis" is "Elvum". Boing Boing: April 3, 2005 - April 9, 2005 Archives
Identifying the female as “Julia, the 6′2″ bien-jambee,” he continued in a pedantic tone, “The room is a typical 10 × 18 with its coir matting, woven cadjan walls, wooden shutters, and army bed with folded-up mosquito net above.” A Covert Affair
But at the same time, he thought that women should not follow blindly and pedantically in honor killings. He also had a unique insight in the area of education.
Minutius Felix, so Victorinus, thus far Arnobius: I cite and quote mine authors (which, howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine style, I must and will use) sumpsi, non suripui; and what Varro, lib. Anatomy of Melancholy
Mayhew, despite the most pedantic anatomization of the condition and variety of street-sweepers, rarely feels obliged to allude to what is actually being swept.
The good ones are fun and clever; the bad ones humourless and pedantic.
It's always nice to know that there are people out there who are even more pedantic than myself.
When I'm chatting with someone and want to refer to Romanes, I call it "Gypsy" for the same reason -- it would be appallingly discourteous to use a name certain to go over their head, and I would find it unbearably pedantic to be saying things like "now, in Romanes, which is what you call 'Gypsy'... Languagehat.com: LANGUAGE GUESSER.
So much pedantry is misplaced, and it is a waste of time to expect consistency from pedants, myself included, especially when they are hungry enough to consider compromising their pedantic principles. So where can language snobs get their doughnuts? « Motivated Grammar
I'm being a bit pedantic. Times, Sunday Times
It's heavy stuff, but the idea-rich tale unfolds its philosophy in a way that manages to neatly skirt pedantic style and didactic tone.
Insightful without being pedantic, learned but not overbearing, the book is full of humorous anecdotes while never shirking the factual responsibility of the historian.
He is entertained by an eminent Dutch jurist in Amsterdam -- and upon the pages of the chronicle it appears that the gentleman is "waxy" and "a little pedantic," and that he is probably the sort of "thin, delicate, well barbered" professor that Ibsen had in mind when he cast about for a husband for the daughter of General Gabler. A Book of Prefaces
With his sharp, crisp, witty script, he deconstructs identity politics without ever dipping into the pedantic or falling prey to either easy sentimentality or unvarnished pathos.
Most contemporary Baptists would find a sermon like this ponderous and pedantic.
You know, he can be awfully pedantic, and awfully insufferable.
Still, it is clearly pedantic to avoid the obvious by clothing it in befogged terminology, as one might by writing arenaceous or sabulous for sandy, immund for dirty, nates for buttocks, or venenate for poison (vb.). VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 3
This may seem a pedantic distinction, but it is an extremely important one. Times, Sunday Times

How To Use Pedantic In A Sentence

Report a problem

Please indicate a type of error

Additional information (optional):