Dictionary

pedantess en · NOUN

Etymology

From pedant + -ess.

Meanings

1. (feminine, form-of, obsolete, rare) Female equivalent of pedant.
   form of pedant
   • Why does not this pedantess wear the breeches? 1820 May, W. Kenny, chapter VII, in The Historical and Unrevealed Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of Napoleon Buonaparte; Serving as an Illustration of the Manuscript of St. Helena. From 1781 to 1798. […], 3rd edition, page 95:
   • We do not wish our boys and girls to become pedants. Well, then, we must not become pedants and pedantesses ourselves. 1884 July 1, H. Montagu Butler, “The Teacher an Example to His Pupils”, in The Journal of Education, a Monthly Record and Review, volume VI, number 180, London: William Rice, page 263:
   • Unfeeling pedantess, says I to myself; thou art no wife for me. 1784, [Robert] Bage, “Barham Downs”, in The Novels of Swift, Bage, and Cumberland, London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., published 1824, page 257:
   • ‘Dryden weighs poets in his virtuoso’s scales that will weigh to the hundredth part of a grain, as curiously as Juvenal’s lady pedantess—[…]’ 1895, R[ichard] Garnett, The Age of Dryden, London: George Bell and Sons, page 251:

Forms