a schoolmaster or pedagogue, who professes to instruct and govern youth, teach them the humanities, and the arts. See PEDAGOGUE.

PEDANT is also used for a rough, unpolished man of letters, who makes an impertinent use of the sciences, and abounds in unfashionable criticisms and observations.

Dacier defines a pedant, a person who has more reading than good sense. See PEDANTRY.

Pedants are people ever armed with quibbles and sophistries, breathe nothing but disputation and chicanery, and pursue a proposition to the last limits of logic.

Malebranche describes a pedant as a man full of false erudition, who makes a parade of his knowledge, and is ever quoting some Greek or Latin author, or hunting back to a remote etymology.

St Evremont says, that to paint the folly of a pedant, we must represent him as turning all conversation to some one science or subject he is best acquainted withal.

There are pedants of all conditions, and all robes. Wicquefort says, an ambassador, always attentive to formalities and decors, is nothing else but a political pedant.