Ah, ha! A returning rose among the thorns... a diamond in the rough... Mr. Peter Pedant! Noted from here in the US, Mr. P was always refreshingly candid and thoroughly knowledgeble about a wide variety of subjects. Gone for years now to reappear... Mr. Pedant's moniker is one of my favorite (if overused) words thought to be thoroughly English in origin... however, on further reflection we find... “The word "pedant" comes from the French pédant (used in 1566 in Darme & Hatzfeldster's Dictionnaire général de la langue française) or its older mid-15th Century Italian source pedante, "teacher, schoolmaster". (Compare the Spanish pedante.) The origin of the Italian pedante is uncertain, but multiple dictionaries suggest that it was contracted from the mediaeval Latin pædagogans, present participle of pædagogare, "to act as pedagogue, to teach" (Du Cange).[1] The Latin word is derived from Greek παιδαγωγός, paidagōgós, παιδ- "child" + ἀγειν "to lead", which originally referred to a slave who escorted children to and from school but later meant "a source of instruction or guidance".
It is with some misfortune that the term in English is typically used with a negative connotation, indicating someone overly concerned with minutiae and whose tone is perceived as condescending. When it was first used by Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost (1598), it simply meant "teacher". Shortly afterwards it began to be used negatively. Thomas Nashe wrote in Have with you to Saffron-walden (1596), page 43: "O, tis a precious apothegmaticall [terse] Pedant, who will finde matter inough to dilate a whole daye of the first inuention [invention] of Fy, fa, fum".
None of which is applicable to our respected Peter (in my opinion)… welcome back!
(Apologies for the mini-hijack Jenna).