pedantry

• pædantry (obsolete)

From Italian pedanteria, equivalent to pedant +‎ -ry. Compare also French pédanterie.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛd.ən.tɹi/

• Audio (SA)

  (file)

pedantry (countable and uncountable, plural pedantries)

1. An excessive attention to detail or rules.
   1. An instance of such behaviour.

      I don’t want to listen to your pedantries anymore.

      • 1855, Charles Kingsley, “The True and Tragical History of Mr. John Oxenham of Plymouth”, in Westward Ho!: Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, […], volume I, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 209:

        [T]he southern court of the ballium had become a flower-garden, with quaint terraces, statues, knots of flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all the pedantries of the topiarian art.

2. An overly ambitious display of learning.

• 1695, A Reply to the Second Defence of the XXVIII Propositions, Said to Be Wrote in Answer to a Socinian Manuscript, London, page 3:

  I am adviſed to paſs by whatever does not concern the Cauſe, to bear the Imputation of affected Pœdantry, Ignorance and Arrogance.

• pedanticalness
• pedanticness

• pedant
• pedantic
• pedantocracy

• “pedantry”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “pedantry”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “pedantry”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.