pedantics

English

Etymology

From pedantic +‎ -ics.

Noun

pedantics pl (plural only)

1. Pedantic details.
   • 1976, Fish and Wildlife Miscellaneous—Part 4: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, page 126:

     I deal with this type of thing every day and while I do not go into pedantics we must have scientific evidence gathered in each area to put the problem into perspective.

   • 1983, Girma Negash, Language and Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Revolutionary Rhetoric of Regime Leaders and Power Contenders in Ethiopia Between 1974 and 1977, pages 220–221:

     In Addis Zemen, in particular, the old hortatory pedantics of the need for progress, economic development and bureaucratic efficiency continued even after the change of regime. The only aspect of the pedantics that changed was the type of precedents mentioned in terms of development problems and their solutions.

   • 1997 May 26, Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives, page 4001:

     What we need to do here is not so much address the politics and the pedantics but make sure that—not just in this industry but also in other industries—the protocols put in place to protect our industries are in fact effective.

   • 2015, Lucy A. Snyder, While the Black Stars Burn, Raw Dog Screaming Press:

     “This isn’t the time to argue pedantics, Ace, come. Time and tide melt the snowman and all that.”

2. Pedantry; The quality of being pedantic.
   • 1975, Agricultural Research and Development, Special Oversight Hearings, Part II: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology and the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Scientific Planning and Analysis of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth Congress, First Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1976, page 584:

     It has to be imaginative, but at the same time we have to do a certain amount of pedantics. What I might call pedantic research to answer the questions that our first witness has to have each year.

   • 1955, Donald Belden Muir, John Dryden's Albion and Albanius and King Arthur: An Analysis of Operatic Form, page 91:

     The lack of pretension, mentioned above, is present in the music, also. Pomposity and pedantics are absent from this score.

   • 1983, David James Duncan, The River Why, Sierra Club Books, page 223:

     I considered launching a lecture in support of the thesis that helmets are not always an effective antidote to slingshots (witness Goliath), but it seemed likely that pedantics would only attract fire to my own unhelmeted skull; and my desire to resort to pedantics constituted a final proof: I was no hippie.

   • 1989, Scheme and the Art of Programming, The MIT Press, →ISBN, page 293:

     Scheme is a wonderful thing. Complex procedural ideas / Are expressed via simple strings. Its clear semantics, and lack of pedantics, / Help make programs run, run, RUN!

   • 2005, Criminal Procedure: Adjudication and Right to Counsel, Aspen Publishers, page 228:

     This is not only pedantics, I quote Corinthian, Chapter 13, 8th Verse.

   • 2018, Dawn Sister, A Springful of Winters (Seasons of Love Anthology), Beaten Track Publishing, →ISBN, page 104:

     Stephan is still smiling, and I can’t tell if this is because he’s happy, or amused, but at least he doesn’t look annoyed or frustrated because of my pedantics over timing.