You're looking for synonyms for "pedantic"! Here's a breakdown, categorized by slightly different nuances:
Focusing on Overly Concerned with Rules/Details:
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Formal:
- Meticulous: While often positive, can lean towards excessive detail.
- Scrupulous: Again, usually positive, but can imply excessive attention to minutiae.
- Fastidious: Can suggest being overly concerned with cleanliness and detail.
- Exact: Can be used to describe someone who insists on precise accuracy.
- Precise: Similar to exact, emphasizing accuracy.
- Rigorous: Implies strict adherence to rules or methods.
- Punctilious: Emphasizes strict attention to detail and correct behavior.
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More Negative Connotations:
- Hair-splitting: Focuses on making overly fine distinctions.
- Nitpicking: Emphasizes finding and criticizing trivial faults.
- Caviling: Similar to nitpicking, but can also imply raising petty objections.
- Quibbling: Arguing or raising objections about trivial matters.
- Legalistic: Suggests an excessive adherence to the letter of the law or rules.
- Formalistic: Emphasizes adherence to outward forms and conventions rather than substance.
Focusing on Showing Off Knowledge:
- Condescending: Implies a patronizing display of knowledge.
- Patronizing: Similar to condescending, treating others as inferior due to perceived superior knowledge.
- Didactic: Often used for teaching, but can imply being overly instructive and preachy.
- Preachy: Suggests giving unwanted advice in a moralizing way.
- Lecturing: Implies giving a lengthy and often unwanted explanation.
- Know-it-all: An informal term for someone who acts as if they know everything.
- Wiseacre: An archaic term for someone who affects wisdom but is often foolish.
Focusing on Being Unimaginative/Literal:
- Literal-minded: Lacking imagination or understanding beyond the surface meaning.
- Unimaginative: Lacking creativity or originality.
- Prosaic: Lacking poetic beauty or excitement; ordinary and dull.
Which synonym is best depends on the specific nuance you want to convey. Consider the context and the reason you're looking for a synonym. Are you emphasizing their attention to detail, their tendency to correct others on minor points, or their desire to show off their knowledge?
For example:
- Instead of saying "He was being pedantic about the comma," you could say "He was being nitpicky about the comma."
- Instead of saying "Her pedantic explanation bored everyone," you could say "Her lecturing explanation bored everyone."
- Instead of saying "His pedantic adherence to the rules was frustrating," you could say "His legalistic adherence to the rules was frustrating."