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
- merbau
- merbromin
- merc
- mercado
- Mercalli scale
- mercantile
- mercantile doctrine
- mercantilely
- mercantile marine
- mercantile school
- mercantile store
- mercantile system
- mercantile theory
- mercantilism
- mercantilist
- mercantility
- mercaptal
- mercaptan
- mercaptide
- mercaptoacetic acid
- mercaptoethanol
- mercaptopurine
- mercapturic acid
- Mercator chart
- Mercator, Gerardus