(n.) One who, in the time of Queen Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts, opposed traditional and formal usages, and advocated simpler forms of faith and worship than those established by law; -- originally, a term of reproach. The Puritans formed the bulk of the early population of New England.
(n.) One who is scrupulous and strict in his religious life; -- often used reproachfully or in contempt; one who has overstrict notions.
(a.) Of or pertaining to the Puritans; resembling, or characteristic of, the Puritans.
Example Sentences:
(1) It may have been like punk never ‘appened, but you caught a whiff of the movement’s scorched earth puritanism in the mocking disdain with which Smash Hits addressed rock-star hedonism.
(2) Central to the whole project was a patient fascination with religion, represented, in particular, in his attempt to understand the revolutionary power of puritanism.
(3) In the more puritanical United States, however, where the same inequalities are evident, I wouldn't hold my breath.
(4) Early in the film, a journalist comes to interview him about his defunct literary career; he berates her for caring (intellectually, Jep is a closet puritan).
(5) This mythology, embodied over those decades in the Horatio Alger stories consumed particularly by upwardly mobile young men and in the phrase "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps", consistently held out that American promise by equating hard work (along with other good Puritan values such as delayed gratification, temperance, saving and self-reliance) with economic success.
(6) Back in the high puritan era of 17th-century England, when Oliver Cromwell tried to ban all forms of public dance, from court masques and ballets to maypole dancing, the effect of the prohibition was to create a generation for whom dance represented sin.
(7) We were telling ourselves he's too puritanical, he's not going to like the movie, and in fact he loved it."
(8) (1966), worked with Simpson, Arnold Wesker and John Arden , and, having staged Howard Barker ’s Cheek in 1970, collaborated with him in 1986 on the audacious Women Beware Women, adapting Middleton’s Jacobean original with poisonous puritanism.
(9) Cultural puritans might denounce the whole idea as a perverse extreme of reality TV, which in its Big Brother incarnation – a format also invented by the Dutch – was always designed primarily as a form of psychological torture for our sadistic viewing pleasure.
(10) Like the American revolution and the French revolution, like the three major dictatorships of the 20th century – I say "major" because there have been more, Cambodia and Romania among them – and like the New England Puritan regime before it, Gilead has utopian idealism flowing through its veins, coupled with a high-minded principle, its ever-present shadow, sublegal opportunism, and the propensity of the powerful to indulge in behind-the-scenes sensual delights forbidden to everyone else.
(11) Like many a child of the manse he reacted against the puritanism of his childhood without abandoning its high-mindedness or sense of moral certainty.
(12) That you thought the American response to erotic capital had been perverted by puritanism.
(13) The sales slowdown was particularly acute at the beginning of the year, which has become increasingly popular for some post-Christmas puritanism.
(14) His choice of collaborators and repertory served the puritanical rigour that illuminated his productions there, as well as with Joint Stock and the National Theatre, from landmark new plays, such as Edward Bond’s Saved (1965) and Lear (1972), to revelatory versions of classics, including a 1963 production of The Recruiting Officer with Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith.
(15) Relying on the evidence of the King's own letters and frank comments from his Puritan critics, most historians assume that his relations with some of these men were sexual.
(16) It is felt that the current belief of greater homosexuality in actors, as compared to the general population, is a product of our Puritan heritage, the actor's unconventionality, and of public flaunting of the homoerotic behavior of that portion of actors that are homosexual.
(17) The Dome was the core of the dream for the new Capital, which would no longer be called Berlin (a name that, to the puritanical Hitler, carried unpleasant associations of sin and relativism), but the more ancient-sounding Germania.
(18) The Entertainer is his diagnosis of the sickness that is currently afflicting our slap-happy breed.” Kenneth Tynan on The Entertainer “A puritanical element has always been there in me.
(19) Sondheim was compelled to write the statement following a New Yorker feature last week, which reported him telling a group of drama teachers that Disney had removed some of the racier material in the musical thanks to "puritanical ethics" in American society.
(20) It is not clear where this thread of Puritanism comes from within Apple.