pedantic
/pɪˈdantɪk
/adjective
Excessively concerned with minor details or rules; overscrupulous: his analyses are careful and even painstaking, but never pedantic...
- I had the same middle parted haircut for eight years, and I was quite pedantic about this being perfect.
- For years, pedantic scholars have crowed about the debt rock owes the blues.
- Well you could say it's a deal of nitpicking by pedantic scientists over detail.
Synonyms
overscrupulous, scrupulous, precise, exact, over-exacting, perfectionist, precisionist, punctilious, meticulous, fussy, fastidious, finical, finicky;
dogmatic, purist, literalist, literalistic, formalist, scholastic;
casuistic, casuistical, sophistic, sophistical;
captious, hair-splitting, quibbling, pettifogging, fault-finding, hypercritical, cavilling, carping
informal nitpicking, pernickety
archaic overnice
learned, cerebral, didactic, bookish, pedagogic, donnish, highbrow, ivory-tower, pretentious, pompous;
intellectual, academic, scholastic, scholarly, literary
informal egghead
Derivatives
pedantically
/ adverb ...- Kerry makes this last ridiculous point pedantically, as if it's at the very core of what really matters.
- So I'm watching the movie with the careful eye of one who knows the book and will be judging it pedantically.
- ‘Let me explain,’ continued Brian, almost pedantically.
Rhymes
- Northampton
- Northamptonshire
- force-out
- force play
- force protection
- forceps
- force pump
- forcer
- force-ripe
- for certain
- force someone out
- force someone's hand
- force something down
- force something on/upon
- force the bidding
- force the issue
- force the pace
- forcible
- forcibly
- forcing
- forcing house
- for crying out loud
- ford
- fordable
- for dear life