language lawyer

noun

Etymology

Compound of language + lawyer. Defined in the Jargon File. The definition is often cited verbatim as: A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question “if only you had thought to look there”.

Definitions

1
A pedant, someone overly focused on semantics.
- This website is full of way too many language lawyers who get in the way of all the meaningful discussions.
2
An expert of a programming language who is extremely well-versed in its specification.
- I need a language lawyer: is this UB?
3
To behave in a lawyer-like way and discuss semantic differences pedantically. To lawyer…
To behave in a lawyer-like way and discuss semantic differences pedantically. To lawyer over language.
- Let's not language lawyer the little details; a big-picture approach will be fine for this tutorial.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for language lawyer. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA