pedagogue
Americannoun
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a teacher; schoolteacher.
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a person who is pedantic, dogmatic, and formal.
noun
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a teacher or educator
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a pedantic or dogmatic teacher
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of pedagogue
1350–1400; Middle English pedagoge < Latin paedagōgus < Greek paidagōgós a boy's tutor. See ped- 1, -agogue
Explanation
Pedagogue is another name for "teacher," but one who is strict, stiff or old-fashioned. The word comes from the Greek pedo for "child" and agogos for "leader." A pedagogue leads people by teaching. The noun pedagogue, pronounced "PED-uh-gog," originally referred to "a slave who brings boys to school." Although the similar word pedagogy is the art of teaching, pedagogue has negative connotations. To call a teacher a pedagogue implies that he or she is "the teacher that time forgot," possibly using notes and handouts from twenty years ago, standing in that same spot, year after year, saying the same things, as students stare out the same windows.
Vocabulary lists containing pedagogue
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ever the eager pedagogue, as played with buoyant energy by Mr. Morse, Beckett annotates her performance: “Haydn based that movement of the symphony on a folk song. From Croatia.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 30, 2026
As composer, virtuoso pianist, theorist, highly opinionated futurist and pedagogue, Busoni exerted a little-acknowledged, though crucial, component of the cultural identity of San Francisco and beyond, Los Angeles very much included.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 3, 2023
The renowned piano pedagogue Rosina Lhevinne heard him play and urged the dean of the school to offer him a scholarship.
From New York Times • Mar. 17, 2021
When he arrived at the Tanforan stables where he was initially interred, he thought like a pedagogue, concerned first for the children he saw around him.
From Washington Post • Apr. 2, 2020
He attempted to do what others have failed in, he attempted to lead, here in our huge, noisy city, antipathetic to æsthetic creation, the double existence of a composer and a pedagogue.
From Unicorns by Huneker, James
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
