pedantry

Such pedantry is perhaps why Malaysian durians have earned a special place on the Chinese table.

From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2026

His outlook isn’t rooted purely in rigid pedantry, either: It’s based on his taste, but it’s also tied to what he’s accomplished through a very specific approach.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2022

A windowless chamber is for dwelling on the consequences of your pedantry.

From New York Times ● Oct. 7, 2021

The Big Day is technically Chance the Rapper’s debut album, although this designation is a farcical bit of marketing pedantry even by current standards.

From Slate ● Jul. 29, 2019

Winston Churchill did not, as legend has it, reply to an editor who had corrected his prose with “This is pedantry up with which I will not put.”

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

He was an observational genius whose main talent was for exposure — exposure of the predictable opponent and exposure of pedantries, and he treated both as pretty much the same thing.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 13, 2022

There is a withering crossfire of pedantries in nearly all academic discussions of slavery and American blacks.

From Time Magazine Archive

All professions alike have their besetting vices, pedantries, and infirmities.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 by Various

These are not the most besetting dangers of more modern steersmen: what we have to guard against now is neither a repetition of the pedantries of Steevens nor a recrudescence of the moralities of Ulrici. 

From A Study of Shakespeare by Edmund Gosse

There is no concession to such pedantries as Professor Robertson Smith's "greaves of the warrior that stampeth in the fray," or such barbarisms as Professor Cheynes' "boot of him that trampleth noisily."

From Matthew Arnold by George William Erskine Russell