pedantry means an excessive attention to detail or rules. It carries an Arena rating of 1579, earned across 56 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, pedantry ranks #2,418 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #3,869 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #5,665 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #5,953 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say.
pedantry is pronounced /ˈpɛd.ən.tɹi/.
Why “pedantry” is a great word
PEDANTRY — [Noun] The ostentatious or narrow-minded concern with minor formal rules, trivial details, and academic points. From Italian pedanteria, from pedante ("pedant, teacher") + -ria ("-ry, denoting condition or practice"). Unlike precision, which denotes a virtuous accuracy, or scholarship, which implies deep, productive learning, pedantry is the fetishization of the inessential—a hollow ritual of correctness that mistakes the scaffold for the cathedral. It is the cold correction of a friend’s grammar mid-anecdote, the ten-page footnote disputing a tangential date, the smug satisfaction of knowing the plastic tip of a shoelace while the lace remains untied. Ultimately, it is the armor of the insecure, a small, airless kingdom where being right is a form of being alone.
Etymology
From Italian pedanteria, equivalent to pedant + -ry. Compare also French pédanterie.
noun
- An excessive attention to detail or rules.
- An excessive attention to detail or rules.; An instance of such behaviour.e.g.“I don’t want to listen to your pedantries anymore.”
- An overly ambitious display of learning.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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