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

Even now, lawmakers take this responsibility with a seriousness sometimes bordering on pedantry.

From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2024

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

At that period this famous hotel had its pedantries, but it was severely intellectual.

From Beacon Lights of History, Volume 07 Great Women by John Lord

In those days," says Warton, "ecclesiastics and schoolmen presumed to dictate to kings and to give rules for administering states, drawn from the narrow circle of speculation, and conceived amid the pedantries of a cloister.

From Game and Playe of the Chesse A Verbatim Reprint of the First Edition, 1474 by William Caxton

We boys after a while swapped places with Mammy, and made her the recipient of our small pedantries.

From Southern Lights and Shadows by William Dean Howells