puritan

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“
Thou art too well known for a puritan--roundhead they call thee; and thou hast given them and theirs too many hard knocks, my son, to look they should be willing to let thee gaze on the wonders of their great house.

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Definitions (10)

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  1. One who is very strict and serious in his religious life, or who pretends to great purity of life: first used about 1564, and applied to certain Anabaptists: frequently a term of contempt. About that tyme were many congregations of the Anabaptysts in London, who cawlyd themselves Puritans or Unspotted Lambs of the Lord. Stow, Memoranda (Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, [Camden Soc., p. 143). She would make a puritan of the devil, if he should cheapen a kiss of her. Shak., Pericles, iv. 6. 9.
  2. [capitalized] One of a class of Protestants which arose in England in the sixteenth century. The Puritans maintained a strict Calvinism in doctrine, and demanded, in opposition to those who desired a reform of the church service, the substitution of one from which should be banished all resemblance whatever to the forms of the Roman Catholic Church. Large numbers of them were found both in and out of the Church of England, and various repressive measures were directed against them by the sovereigns and by the prelates Parker, Whitgift, Bancroft, Laud, and others. In the reign of Charles I. the Puritans developed into a political party and gradually gained the ascendancy, but lost it on Cromwell's death, and after the Restoration ceased to be prominent in history. During their early struggles many of them emigrated to New England, especially to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One band of Puritans who separated entirely from the Church were called Separatists or Brownists, and from them came the founders of the Plymouth Colony, often called Pilgrim Fathers or Pilgrims. Now as solemn as a traveller, and as grave as a Puritan's ruff. Marston, Antonio and Mellida, I., Ind. From that time followed nothing but Imprisonments, troubles, disgraces on all those that found fault with the Decrees of the Convocation, and strait were they branded with the Name of Puritans. Milton, Reformation in Eng., i. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all by his peculiar dialect. Macaulay.
  3. Synonyms Puritan, Pilgrim. Careful distinction should be made between the Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers, who settled at Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans, who in 1628–30 founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay at Salem and Boston.
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Examples (50)

  • Freedom of speech in England is more feared than licence of action: a speck on the outside of the platter disgusts your puritan, and the inside is never peeped at, much less discussed Walter Pater praised "Dorian Gray" in the "Bookman"; but thereby only did himself damage without helping his friend. —  Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions
  • If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or “Savoyard vicar,” he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. —  The Life of Jesus
  • Freedom of speech in England is more feared than licence of action: a speck on the outside of the platter disgusts your puritan, and the inside is never peeped at, much less discussed. —  Oscar Wilde, Volume 1
  • One of the reasons why putting the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in the same box is absurd is because the first is a puritan, theocratic organization and operation, while the second fears fundamentalist Islam probably as much as any Western government and has spent a lot of time keeping fundamentalist Islam down. —  StrangeHorizons,August2002
  • Today's J-man is more libertarian than puritan, as one of his neighbors even warns tourists that he just wants to be left alone. —  E! Online (US) - Top Stories
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

Quaker ·  sect ·  separatists ·  ascetic ·  nonconformist ·  hypocrite ·  heretic ·  churchman ·  abolitionist ·  reformer ·  bigoted ·  loyalist
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

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  1. Irreg. from Latin purita(t-)s, purity, + -an. The F. Puritain and Spanish Portuguese Italian Puritano are from English The noun precedes the adjective in use.
 

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