expressions - Person who pretends to not understand unless one speaks in exactly the words they expect



I just realized there are some people around my workplace who




  • always try to correct me when using a certain word, saying that that's not how I should speak, and I should use other words (the ones they provide me with)




  • or pretend they didn't understand what I was saying, but it's pretty clear that they did understand. This again with the same purpose, of making me rephrase, or use the words they expect.




When doing this, they use, among others, the argument that they sure have understood, but others might not. But then, nobody else complains of not having understood what I was saying. Another argument they use is that even if they understood it, what I said was incorrect.


I make the assumption that when I express my ideas in words, I use enough details to get the point across.


I would call this type of non-constructive attitude a 'hater' attitude, but I'm curious whether there's a more specific word for this.


meta: I'm not a native English speaker, and I don't know a word for this in my language, I'd just use the dictionary to find out if my language has an analogous word. Anyway it would be good to know if there's a word for this concept in these two languages. meta: Also, the situations I refer to happen (mostly) when I'm speaking my own language, but the language really isn't the point here, because I do speak multiple languages and I did meet this behavior (though very rarely) when speaking any language.



Answer



You could call a person who does that a pedant:



Pedant (noun)


a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details; one who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge (Merriam-Webster)



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