Pedantry

"The Pedant" by caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson

Pedantry (/ˈpɛd.ən.tri/ PED-en-try) is an excessive concern with formalism, minor details, and rules that are not important.[1][2]

Fowler's Concise Dictionary of Modern English (1926) recognised that the term pedantry was "relative" and subjective, stating "my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, and someone else’s ignorance".[3]

  1. ^ New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2015. ISBN 9780199891535 – via Oxford Reference.
  2. ^ "pedantry". Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  3. ^ Butterfield, Jeremy, ed. (2015). Fowler's Concise Dictionary of Modern English (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191800979 – via Oxford Reference.