puritanism

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the religious beliefs, practices, and historical movement of the Protestant Puritans

   The historian traced how English Puritanism shaped worship, politics, and family life.

2. 2
   noun

   strict moral austerity, especially hostility toward pleasure, luxury, or sexual freedom

   The novel attacks a puritanism that treats every form of pleasure as suspect.

Borrowed from French puritanisme and analysable as puritan + -ism. The historical sense names the reforming Protestant movement; later writers generalized it to severe moral restraint or suspicion of pleasure, often without reference to Puritan theology.

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