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Erudite vs Pedantic - What's the difference?

erudite | pedantic |

As adjectives the difference between erudite and pedantic

is that erudite is learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from books while pedantic is like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.

erudite

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from books.
  • * 1850 , , Ch. XII:
  • At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.
  • * 1913 , , The Custom of the Country , ch. 43:
  • Elmer Moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the Blue and the Gray, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and the Cherry Tree . . ., dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations.
  • * 2006 , Jeff Israely, " Preaching Controversy," Time , 17 Sept.:
  • Perhaps his erudite mind does not quite yet grasp how to transform his beloved scholarly explorations into effective papal politics.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    pedantic

    English

    Alternative forms

    * pedantick (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.
  • Being showy of one’s knowledge, often in a boring manner.
  • Being finicky or fastidious, especially with language.
  • "On the contrary, the fall was perfectly safe; it was the impact with the ground that killed him".

    Synonyms

    * (like a pedant) anal-retentive, fussy, nit-picky * (knowledge-peacock) (sometimes applicable) nit-picky, ostentatious, pedagogical, pretentious * (linguistically affected) fussy, nit-picky * See also

    Anagrams

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