puritan
/ˈpjʊ.ɹɪ.tən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.01 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Acting or behaving according to the Puritan morals (e.g. propagating modesty), especially with regard to pleasure, nudity and sex; ascetic.
Derogatory
noun
A member of a particular Protestant religious sect advocating greater purity and piety.
adj
Alternative letter-case form of puritan.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "A pietistic protestantism, rigid, self-righteous, unintellectual, obsessed with puritan morality to the point where hypocrisy was its automatic companion, dominated this desolate epoch."
- "It’s a seedy time of the night and Jacky is telling me about sailors and their needs. A man called P. C. Alexander, an ex-Indian High-Commissioner in London has cleaned up Madras. There’s a very Puritan atmosphere here now, and the seamen are not happy. ‘All ship’s crew very happy with Calcutta. Can bring many girls there. Bombay too – no problem.’ Bombay is apparently the only city in India to license prostitutes."
- "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."
Etymology
See Puritan.
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpjʊ.ɹɪ.tən/
- British English: /ˈpjʊə.ɹɪ.tən/