From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishpedanticpe‧dan‧tic /pɪˈdæntɪk/ adjective ARGUERULE/REGULATIONpaying too much attention to rules or to small unimportant detailspedantic about Some people can be very pedantic about punctuation. —pedantically /-kli/ adverb
Examples from the Corpus
pedantic• Her book is informative and scholarly, but never pedantic.• The booklet that accompanies the CD is informative and scholarly, without being pedantic.• But it's in everyone's interest to ensure that any new test is not unnecessarily time-consuming, expensive and pedantic.• To commonplace actions he brought a special pedantic awkwardness.• It has cloaked it in pedantic, complicated, incomprehensible language which is also quite inappropriate.• Don't be so pedantic - does it really matter if I don't pronounce it right?• D'Arquebus Senior's pedantic excuses made no sense.• But trying to find an exact replica of the Virginia garden would be a pedantic exercise.• Yet in his exacting, almost pedantic manner, he was convinced that it would happen.• The papers wre stacked with pedantic neatness on his desk.• It demonstrates that more can be achieved by bringing together a mass of illustration than many a pedantic thesis.• He seemed to display a certain insensitivity in these cases - an impression enhanced by his somewhat pedantic way of speech. 