Hamlet, Act II, scene 2. Hamlet mocks the pedant
Polonius by pretending to be a pedantic madman.
A
pedant is a person who is overly concerned with
formalism and
precision, or who makes a show of his learning.
[ Accessed on 2008-12-29]Etymology
The
English language word "pedant" comes from the
French pédant (used in 1566 in Darme & Hatzfeldster's
Dictionnaire général de la langue française) or its older mid-15th century
Italian source
pedante, "teacher, schoolmaster". (Compare the Spanish
pedante.) The origin of the Italian
pedante is uncertain, but multiple dictionaries suggest that it was a contraction of the mediaeval
Latin pædagogans, present
participle of
pædagogare, "to act as pedagogue, to teach" (
Du Cange). The Latin word is derived from Greek ,
paidagōgós, "child" + "to lead", which originally referred to a slave who escorted children to and from school but later meant "a source of instruction or guidance".
Usage
When it was first used by
Shakespeare in
Love's Labour's Lost (1588), it simply meant "teacher". Shortly afterwards it began to be used pejoratively.
Thomas Nashe wrote in
Have with you to Saffron-walden (1596), page 43: "O, tis a precious apothegmaticall [terse] Pedant, who will finde matter inough to dilate a whole daye of the first inuention [invention] of Fy, fa, fum".
The term in contemporary English is typically used with a negative
connotation, indicating someone overly concerned with
minutiae and whose tone is perceived as
condescending. Therefore, being referred to as a pedant, or pedantic, is generally considered insulting. However some people take pride in being pedants, notably among them
Oliver Kamm, a columnist for
The Times who observed, "What used to be standard English is now often regarded as finicky. My pedantry is an insistence on reasonable accuracy."
Related disorders
Pedantry can also be an indication of certain developmental disorders. In particular those with
high-functioning autism, often use pedantic speech.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is also in part characterized by a form of pedantry that is overly concerned with following rules, procedures and practices. Sometimes the rules that OCPD sufferers obsessively follow are of their own devising, or are corruptions or re-interpretations of actual rules.
Quotations
- "A Man who has been brought up among Books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is what we call a Pedant. But, methinks, we should enlarge the Title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his Profession and particular way of Life."—Joseph Addison, Spectator 1711.
- "Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgements of one another."—Desiderius Erasmus
- "The pedant is he who finds it impossible to read criticism of himself without immediately reaching for his pen and replying to the effect that the accusation is a gross insult to his person. He is, in effect, a man unable to laugh at himself."—Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id.
- "The term, then, is obviously a relative one: my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education and someone else’s ignorance."—H. W. Fowler, Modern English Usage
- "If you're the kind of person who insists on this or that 'correct' use... abandon your pedantry as I did mine. Dive into the open flowing waters and leave the stagnant canals be... Above all, let there be pleasure!"—Stephen Fry
