Pedantic vs Pragmatic - What's the difference?
pedantic | pragmatic |
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.
Practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.
* The sturdy furniture in the student lounge was pragmatic , but unattractive.
*
philosophical; dealing with causes, reasons, and effects, rather than with details and circumstances; said of literature.
* Sir W. Hamilton
* M. Arnold
As adjectives the difference between pedantic and pragmatic
is that pedantic is like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning while pragmatic is practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.pedantic
English
Alternative forms
* pedantick (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- "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 alsoExternal links
* *Anagrams
*pragmatic
English
Alternative forms
* pragmatick (archaic) * pragmatique (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- Nor indeed are these restrictions pragmatic'' in nature: i.e. the ill-formedness of the ''heed''-sentences in (60) is entirely different in kind from the oddity of sentences like:
(61) !That man will eat any car which thinks he?s stupid
which is purely ''pragmatic (i.e. lies in the fact that (61) describes the kind of bizarre situation which just doesn?t happen in the world we are familiar with, where cars don?t think, and people don?t eat cars).
- Pragmatic history.
- Pragmatic poetry.
