pedantic

He may not write with the ease and grace of a man of letters, but he is never pretentious and not often pedantic.

Its teachings are not, indeed, pedantic precedents; but they are the illustrations of living principles.

Hence it may seem unsuitable and pedantic to treat with scientific seriousness what is not in itself of a serious nature.

Nobody ever carried further the pedantic affectation of avoiding modern terms in his Latinity.

This devotion makes them very grave, and possibly very happy after a pedantic fashion.

Pedantic he seems to us often, and with more or less arrogant conceit of his own ability and acquirements.

She knew the depth of sincerity which was sometimes obscured by his pedantic phrases.

But while the most famous of the men of letters were welcome in her salon, the tone was far from pedantic or even earnest.

A student takes amongst the flowers a pedantic old volume, a treatise as dry and crabbed as its title.

The minister saw, in this altered date, nothing more than a pedantic desire to afford proof of exactitude and good government.