Back in 2020 I posted about the etymology of pedant ; now I offer a very interesting review by Clare Bucknell (NYRB, May 14, 2026; archived ) of On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All by Arnoud S. Q. Visser. (You can see the book discussed at this Overthink YouTube video , hosted by Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán; Visser shows up at the 20:14 mark.) Herewith, as usual, some excerpts to whet your appetite: Visser’s main claim is that accusations of pedantry have tended to be “less about the content of ideas than about conduct.” Scholarship may turn on abstract questions, but the way its practitioners act in the world and present themselves to others is a social and material one. The beliefs of Greek philosophers in imperial Rome often dictated striking displays of indifference to decorum—Stoics loftily rejecting worldly comforts, Cynics farting or masturbating in public.…