Puritanism

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Pu·ri·tan·ism

(pyo͝or′ĭ-tn-ĭz′əm)

1. The practices and doctrines of the Puritans.

2. puritanism Scrupulous moral rigor, especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences: "Puritanism is the source of our greatest hypocrisies and most crippling illusions" (Molly Haskell).

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Pu•ri•tan•ism

(ˈpyʊər ɪ tnˌɪz əm)

n.

1. the principles and practices of the Puritans.

2. (usu. l.c.) extreme, often excessive strictness in moral or religious matters, esp. rigid austerity.

[1565–75]

Puritanism

1. the principles and practices of a movement within 16th-century Anglicanism, demanding reforms in doctrine, polity, and worship, and greater strictness in religious discipline, chiefly in terms of Calvinist principles.
2. a political party developed from the religious movement in the 17th century that successfully gained control of England through revolution and briefly attempted to put Puritan principles to work on all levels of English life and government.
3. U.S. History. the principles and practices of the Congregationalist members of the religious movement who, having migrated to America in 1620, attempted to set up a theocratic state in which clergy had authority over both religious and civil life. — Puritan, n., adj.

Puritanism

A Church of England reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries seeking to exterminate all remnants of Catholic doctrine and ritual.

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Noun	1.	Puritanism - the beliefs and practices characteristic of Puritans (most of whom were Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of England of its Catholic aspects) church service, church - a service conducted in a house of worship; "don't be late for church" Protestantism - the theological system of any of the churches of western Christendom that separated from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation England - a division of the United Kingdom
	2.	Puritanism - strictness and austerity in conduct and religion sternness, strictness - uncompromising resolution

puritanism

noun strictness, austerity, severity, zeal, piety, rigidity, fanaticism, narrowness, asceticism, moralism, prudishness, rigorism, piousness the tight-lipped puritanism of the Scottish literary world

Quotations
"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy" [H.L. Mencken Chrestomathy]

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

πουριτανισμός

puritanizampuritanstvo

puritanism

[ˈpjʊərɪtənɪzəm] N → puritanismo m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

puritanism

n (Rel: also Puritanism) → Puritanismus m

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

puritanism

[ˈpjʊərɪt/ənˌɪz/əm] n → puritanesimo

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

My lord proposed to erect a miniature Babylon amid similar pleasant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints.

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Then would have arisen, like the shade of departed Puritanism, the venerable dignity of the white-bearded Governor Bradstreet.

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Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up.

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A loyal vagabond; if only his puritanism doesn't shy at a likeness .

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It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a New England trait,--the stern old stuff of Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.

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In their train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players, whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers, and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they came across the sea.

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But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot.

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During the reign of Puritanism in England the people had been forbidden even innocent pleasures.

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At Cambridge he assimilated two of the controlling forces of his life, the moderate Puritanism of his college and Platonic idealism.

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Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.

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"I lurve England," he used to say--"lurve England, but Puritanism, sorr, I abhor.

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The only other things are a few old missals and little Catholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the Middle Ages--their family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. We only put them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about and defaced."