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puritan

noun
/ˈpjʊə.ɹɪ.tən/UK/ˈpjʊ.ɹɪ.tən/US/ˈpjʊɹɪtən/US/ˈpjʊəɹɪtən/UK

Etymology

Probably from purity + -an, because they sought to purify Church of England worship of what they perceived as Roman Catholic aspects. The capitalised form preceded the lowercase form puritan.

  1. derived from *pewH-✻ — “to cleanse, purify”
  2. derived from pūrus — “clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”
  3. derived from pur
  4. inherited from pure
  5. suffixed as purity — “pure + ity”
  6. formed as puritan — “purity + -an”

Definitions

  1. A puritanical person.

    • These new puritans have turned out to be surprisingly unskilled and inexperienced - very different from my generation who invented wife-swapping, orgies and free love in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

  2. Acting or behaving according to the Puritan morals (e.g. propagating modesty), especially…

    Acting or behaving according to the Puritan morals (e.g. propagating modesty), especially with regard to pleasure, nudity and sex; ascetic.

    • A pietistic protestantism, rigid, self-righteous, unintellectual, obsessed with puritan morality to the point where hypocrisy was its automatic companion, dominated this desolate epoch.

  3. A member of a particular Protestant religious sect advocating greater purity and piety.

  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. Alternative letter-case form of puritan.

      • Chardonnay is very malleable, but once we get the fruit in we actually take a very Puritan approach to it.
      • I learned to work from my grandfather, who held a very Puritan kind of work ethic.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for puritan. 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