pedantess

English

Etymology

From pedant +‎ -ess.

Noun

pedantess (plural pedantesses)

1. (rare, obsolete) female equivalent of pedant
   • 1784, [Robert] Bage, “Barham Downs”, in The Novels of Swift, Bage, and Cumberland, London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., published 1824, page 257:

     Unfeeling pedantess, says I to myself; thou art no wife for me.

   • 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:

     Why does not this pedantess wear the breeches?

   • 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:

     We do not wish our boys and girls to become pedants. Well, then, we must not become pedants and pedantesses ourselves.

   • 1895, R[ichard] Garnett, The Age of Dryden, London: George Bell and Sons, page 251:

     ‘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—[…]’