ˈped ə nt noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle French pedant, from Italian pedante, perhaps from Latin paedagogant-, paedagogans, present participle of paedagogare to instruct, from paedagogus pedagogue
1. obsolete
a. : a household tutor
b. : a male schoolteacher
like a pedant that keeps a school in the church — Shakespeare
2.
a. : one who parades his learning especially book learning
a pompous pedant — T.B.Macaulay
the polysyllabic obscurantist style of the … pedant — Marvin Lowenthal
b. : one who is uninspired, unimaginative, or narrowly academic or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge
some dusty college of pedants, their noses buried in … bibliographical data — Herbert Read
a scholar, yet surely no pedant — Oliver Goldsmith
c. : a formalist or precisionist in teaching
the great musicians of the past were not pedants — Irving Babbitt