as in teacher
disapproving
a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details
They found the professor to be a dull pedant more concerned with the intricacies of punctuation than the craft of writing.
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Recent Examples of pedant
Avery, the heroine of Anika Jade Levy’s debut novel, Flat Earth (Catapult, $26), spends many turgid nights with a pedant.
—
Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 23 Nov. 2025
As botanists and pedants will tell you, figs are technically a flower, not a fruit.
—Emily Saladino, Bon Appetit Magazine, 20 Sep. 2025
Incidentally, for the pedants out there (WIRED salutes you), technically this is not a jet ski, but a personal watercraft, or PWC.
—WIRED, 18 Nov. 2023
As knowledge of Greek has become more exotic—the mark of pedants, nerds, and graduates of expensive schools—capturing the barbarism of ancient Greek, and of the ancient Greeks themselves, has become harder.
—Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2 Oct. 2023
Want to annoy an investing pedant?
—Spencer Jakab, WSJ, 13 Feb. 2023
True, big global history is not for pedants and must be selective to remain accessible.
—Walter Scheidel, Foreign Affairs, 19 Apr. 2022
The highest-energy moment comes when Rob Brydon and David Mitchell have a pedant off about Jeremy Clarkson’s firing.
—Bethy Squires, Vulture, 1 Jan. 2022
While its sister show Jeopardy is better known as a pedant's paradise (misspeaking or misspelling has long been known to sink contestants), every now and then Wheel of Fortune gets in on the action.
—Tyler Aquilina, EW.com, 1 Apr. 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pedant
teacher
Noun
-
From Woodland to Rocklin and even Natomas, teachers in the Sacramento region are prepared to strike as soon as the spring.—
-
Meanwhile, David was a teacher and football coach at the neighboring school, Alief Hastings.—
Cite this Entry
“Pedant.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pedant. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
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