pedantry

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

From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2026

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

From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 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

The Big Day is technically Chance the Rapper’s debut album, although this designation is a farcical bit of marketing pedantry even by current standards.

From Slate ● Jul. 29, 2019

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

Strange pedantries have grown out of the neglect of music as a practical pervading element in modern education.

From The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1864 by Various

We can readily pardon his petty pedantries and the little vices of expression he persisted in.

From Americanisms and Briticisms with other essays on other isms by Brander Matthews

The perspective thus gained will be useful, I hope, both to linguistic students and to the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss linguistic notions as the private pedantries of essentially idle minds.

From Language An Introduction to the Study of Speech by Edward Sapir