Pedant equals Plodder ?

Pedantry looks a strange word - not English in origin, surely. Is it related, one might wonder, to pedicure or pedestrian ? After all, pedestrian can mean 'plodding' in some contexts, and pedants plod, don't they ? And what about 'impediment' ? Impediment means hindrance, and surely, pedants hinder natural use of language, don't they ?

There are two quite distinct word stems involved here One is found in words (Greek and Latin respectively) pous/pod- and pes/ped- meaning 'foot'; so we get, from the Greek, tripod ('three-foot') and gastropod ('stomach-foot' - the scientific name for slugs and snails); and from the Latin, pedal, pedestrian and pedicure - all to do with feet.

The other stem is Greek pais/paid- meaning 'child'; so we have English pedagogue (literally 'child-leader', referring to the servant who in ancient Athens led the children to school); paediatrician (literally 'child-healer', a doctor who specialises in children's ailments); and pedant (a child-teacher).

Teachers of the young (the unimaginative ones, anyway) can be dull , fussy and dogmatic - hence the common notion of being 'pedantic'. But they don't have to be. Not all school-teachers are dull and unimaginative. Some can be interesting and jolly, creative and encouraging. So it's a pity that 'pedantry' has been given such a bad reputation.

PS What set me on this particular track was the discovery that Dr Johnson in his 18th century Dictionary defines the word pedant quite simply as a 'schoolmaster' - and quotes Shakespeare: "A pedant that keeps a school i' the church". Shakespeare's 16th century contemporary Thomas Nashe, though, writes of "a precious apothegmatical pedant, who will find matter enough to dilate a whole day" on the origins of "Fy, fa, fum, I smell the bloud of an English-man". So our unkind misuse of the term is over 4oo years old.

Pedant equals Plodder ?