Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who is strict and precise in adherence to established rules, forms, or standards, especially with regard to religious observance or moral behavior.
- n. A Puritan.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Precise; punctiliously or ostentatiously observant of rules or doctrines.
- Characteristic of precisians; puritanical.
- n. One who adheres punctiliously to certain rules or observances; especially, one who is precise in matters of religion: often used depreciatingly with reference to the English Puritans of the seventeenth century.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete One who limits, or restrains.
- n. An overprecise person; one rigidly or ceremoniously exact in the observance of rules; a formalist; -- formerly applied to the English Puritans.
Etymologies
- From precise + -ian. (Wiktionary)
- From precise. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Scrivener and "precisian" as his father was, he was a skilled musician, and the boy inherited his father's skill on lute and organ.”
History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) Puritan England, 1603-1660
“precisian" zealots held, by the governor-general's permission and under his protection, a synod at Dort, June, 1586, and endeavoured to organise the Reformed Church in accordance with their strict principles of exclusiveness.”
“It will be hours of argument with that rule-bound precisian Androctus, hours of searching for precedent in the Solamnic Measure of Knighthood.”
“Nobody is more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with so little formality of demeanor.”
““Why, you are not turned precisian or puritan, fool?” said”
“I am, it may be, a little of a precisian, and I wish to”
“But here is what neither Papist nor Puritan, latitudinarian nor precisian, ever boggles or makes mouths at.”
“But since that, Tony married a pure precisian, and is as good”
““How!” said Tressilian, who now for the first time interfered in their conversation; “did ye not say this Foster was married, and to a precisian?””
“But do not be too much of a precisian, or "you will unnerve me of my strength.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘precisian’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Doctor Faustus
Various words from the play by Christopher Marlowe.
Good Angel, Bad Angel, pride, covetousness, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lechery, vintner, horse-courser, Helen of Troy and 148 more...
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Brochettes of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for words or phrases that haven't yet found a place in one or more of my other lists.
nonexclusivity, adaptationist, paxillin, adduct, unblushingly cribbed, ptomaïne, microsievert, millisievert, too big to jail, tastemaker, tinsmithing, Nimzo-Indian and 1616 more...
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The Basic Kafka
Words gathered while reading The Basic Kafka, a collection of the short fiction, aphorisms, letters, and diary entries of Franz Kafka.
endways, fretwork, dun, manoeuvre, uprush, hale, execrate, ministration, curtaining, conduce, propitiate, greatcoat and 35 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for precisian.
hernesheir This day one plays a monarch, the next a private person; here one acts a tyrant, on the morrow an exile; a parasite this man to-night, to-morrow a precisian; and so of divers others. --An Excellent Actor, from Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century, 1891, p. 87. Jan 5, 2012