Pedantic

adjective

Overly or affectedly concerned with minute, trivial details
Characterized by learning that is unnecessary or extremely narrow in focus
Characteristic of a pedant or resulting from pedantry

Usage

Pedantic is used to describe a showy, sometimes pretentious fixation with slight or marginal details. The word often describes someone or something as taking an unnecessarily narrow or trivial viewpoint, especially in an academic field such as political science or philosophy; thus it is ironic that the use of pedantic also sometimes implies a sense of ignorance. Because of this focus on insignificant details, a pedantic person or argument tends to miss the big picture and might evince a lack of understanding about the actual importance of their topic. Furthermore, the word suggests an accompanying sense of ostentatiousness; someone who is pedantic is not only overly concerned with the trivialities of a matter but also finds a sense of superiority in his meticulousness, falsely believing it to grant himself an air of insightfulness or expertise. For these reasons, someone or something that is pedantic is usually considered to be insufferably boring and, at times, rather trying on the nerves.

Example: The critic's analysis of the characters' accents in The Sound of Music was nothing short of pedantic.

Example: The pedantic golf coach insisted that his students grip their clubs exactly three inches from the ends of the handles.

Derivative Words

Pedant is a noun which describes a person who is fixated on minute, unnecessary details or who takes a needlessly narrow focus in his learning. It is also an obsolete term for a male schoolteacher. Similarly, pedantry is a noun which describes the actual focus on trivialities exhibited by a pedant. Pedantically is an adverb which describes an action as being the result of a pedantic focus on minor details.

Example: My high school English teacher was quite a pedant - when we studied the stage production of Hamlet, he tried to explain every last twitch of Ophelia's nose!

Example: The argument over whether or not Liszt had been born in 1811 or 1812 was a tiresome exercise in pedantry.

Example: While the two of us planted flowers, my father pedantically insisted that the seedlings be spaced equidistant from one another.

Origin

Pedantic was formed from the word pedant, which reflects the Middle French and Italian terms for a male schoolteacher or headmaster. The root peda- comes probably from Late Latin and describes the espousal of arcane or fastidious learning. The familiar, adjectival pedantic has been in use in English since the early seventeenth century.

In Pop Culture

From the film Liar Liar:

Fletcher: He's a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard, a belligerent old fart, a worthless steaming pile of cow dung, figuratively speaking. (YouTube)

Here Fletcher, who is compelled to tell the truth at all times, describes a higher-up at his company as being annoyingly fastidious about irrelevant details (among other things).

Mnemonic

A person who's pedantic cares too much about semantics.