Definition:
A pejorative term for a grammarian, especially one who is concerned with petty matters of usage.
See also:
- The Endless Decline of the English Language
- Grammar
- Language Maven
- Linguistic Complaint
- Prescriptivism
- Purism
- Triumph of the Barbarisms
- Verbal Hygiene
- What Is a SNOOT?
Etymology
From the Latin, "grammarian" + "poor quality" or "incomplete resemblance"Observations:
- "Не tells thee true, my noble neophyte; my little grammaticaster, he does: it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy, and I know not what supposed sufficiencies; if thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make a noise enough, be impudent enough, and 'tis enough."
(Captain Pantilius Tucca in The Poetaster, by Ben Jonson, 1601) - "Nor have I much troubled their phrase and expression. I have not vexed their language with the doubts, the remarks, and eternal triflings of the French grammaticasters."
(Thomas Rhymer, The Tragedies of the Last Age, 1677) - "Such idiots, despite the rise of "scientific' pedagogy, have not died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; specialists in an objective case that doesn't exist in English; strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under gastro-enteritis."
(H.L. Mencken, "The Educational Process." The Smart Set, 1922) - "Purist is the most persistent of the many terms used to describe those people who concern themselves with 'correct English" or 'correct grammar.' Among other epithets we find tidier-up, precisian, schoolmarm, grammaticaster, word-worrier, prescriptivist, purifier, logic-chopper (H.W. Fowler's word), grammatical moralizer (Otto Jespersen's term for H.W. Fowler), usageaster, usagist, usager, and linguistic Emily Post. All of these seem at least faintly pejorative, some more than faintly so. . . .
"The concern with the improvement, correction, and perfection of the existing language goes back to the 18th century, when the first influential grammars of English were written. There was current at that time a notion that a perfect language existed, at least in theory, and that reformation of the imperfect way existing language was used would lead to that perfection."
(Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 1994)
Pronunciation: gra-MAT-i-kas-ter
Also Known As: purist, grammatomaniac
