PEDANT

[Dr. Goodword]

• pedantic •

Pronunciation: pê-dæn-tik • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Paying undue attention to petty, irrelevant details, characterized by nit-picking, especially in teaching. 2. Flaunting education or erudition, pretending to be more highly educated than is the case.

Notes: Today's adjective derived from the noun pedant which originally meant simply "teacher" but has since come to refer to teachers pejoratively. Pedantry is what keeps the pedant going from one pedantism (act or show of pedantry) to another. Should pedants gain control of the government, we would be governed by a pedantocracy. The political philosopher John Stuart Mill argued (On Liberty 1869) that governments must comprise people of all occupations "…if we would not have our bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy." Apparently John Stuart was OK with bureaucracy.

In Play: The first sense of today's Good Word refers to a kind of pedagogical knit-picking: "I think it would be pedantic to specify how many buttons may be on shirts under the new dress code." The other side of today's word refers to someone too taken with their own education: "Sandy Eggo has been talking like a pedantic know-it-all since receiving her PhD in psychology."

Word History: Today's Good Word used to be French pédant, possibly from Vulgar (Street) Latin *paeden(t)s, which would have been the present participle of *paedere "to instruct". Although we have no written evidence of such a word, pedant came from somewhere and Greek had a verb paideuein "to bring up, raise, educate", based on pai(d)s "child". Latin often borrowed from Greek. We find several words beginning with P that are probably related to the Greek word for "child": Latin puer "boy" and paucus "few, little", the origin of Spanish poco "small, little". Since Proto-Indo-European [p] became [f] in Germanic languages like English, these words are probably related to English few. (Today we thank the unpedantically erudite mind of David Ross for coming up with this childish word.)

[scw1217]

Boy did this word not remind me of someone I know! Thanks, good Dr. because I now have something to call him...

[skinem]

Speaking of flaunting ed...I've always found those that INSISTED in unkind, imperious ways on being called "Doctor" (I know, I know, they've earned it.) by everyone rather pedantic. I usually then refer to them as "Mister Doctor", or take every opportunity to "forget" the doctor. They love me for it.

[Perry]

My boss does that with his honorary PhD, but only for comic effect. In fact, it started with him "demanding" an honorary PhD, in the middle of a University Chancellor's speech, during a formal lunch where my bosses grant of $6.2 million dollars to Western Carolina Universitiy was being announced. He had us rolling on the floor with laughter.

This photo is him, wondering "am I crazy?" to give such a large gift.