pedantry

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an ostentatious or ill-timed display of learning

   The lecture buried a useful argument beneath layers of pedantry.

2. 2
   noun

   excessive concern with minor rules, details, or formal correctness

   His insistence on correcting every comma struck the group as pedantry.

Borrowed from Italian pedanteria and reinforced by French pedanterie, both formed from pedant. Pedant originally meant a schoolmaster or teacher, but it acquired the disparaging sense of someone who displays learning or insists on rules in an inappropriate, tiresome way.

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