pedantry

In a novel full of insufferable characters interfering with romantic soulmates, Mary commits the sins of both pedantry and priggishness.

From Salon ● Jun. 25, 2026

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

From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2026

Here’s my favorite recent example of this sort of unhelpful pedantry:

From Slate ● Nov. 4, 2024

I’m deeply dismayed that the perennial paragon of pedantry, George F. Will, failed at either simple arithmetic or calendar history.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 9, 2022

This logician would be unbearably pedantic, but there is a grain of good taste in the pedantry.

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

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

But the pedantries and affectations of this wonderful society seem to have made no immediate impression upon La Rochefoucauld, whose early years were those of the young nobleman devoid of all apparent intellectual curiosity.

From Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France by Edmund Gosse

It was the real speech of the evening, which was all along waiting to be delivered instead of the frigid pedantries on the paper.

From The Half-Hearted by John Buchan