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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
327 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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pedant
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synonyms: pettifogger, ~donnish, ~punctilious ???
► definition
Definition:one who is overly concerned with minor details or rules while disregarding common sense
► uses
Uses:
for a moment he looked almost pleased. A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has found out some useless fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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"I'm just so sick of pedants and conceited little tearer-downers I could scream."
J.D. Salinger. Franny and Zooey, p.17 (1955)
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I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: [...] no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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He liked knowing about such details. The derivations of words, curious usages. I used to tease him about being pedantic.
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto
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Percy: "I have succeeded in creating gold, pure gold!"
Blackadder: "Are you sure?"
Percy: "Yes, my lord! Behold...(while opening container)"
Blackadder: "Percy, it's green."
Percy: "That's right, my lord."
Blackadder: "Yes Percy. I don't want to be pedantic or anything, but the color of gold - is gold. That's why it's called 'gold'. What you have discovered, if it has a name, is some 'green'."
Blackadder, Season 2, BBC
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Dessalles, the tutor he had brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: With bonus material from Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman
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