Pietism
noun
a movement, originating in the Lutheran Church in Germany in the 17th century, that stressed personal piety over religious formality and orthodoxy.
Pietism
American
[pahy-i-tiz-uhm]
/ ˈpaɪ ɪˌtɪz əm /
noun
-
a movement, originating in the Lutheran Church in Germany in the 17th century, that stressed personal piety over religious formality and orthodoxy.
-
the principles and practices of the Pietists.
-
(lowercase) intensity of religious devotion or feeling.
-
(lowercase) exaggeration or affectation of piety.
- Synonyms:
- sanctimony
pietism
1
British
/ ˈpaɪɪˌtɪzəm /
noun
-
a less common word for piety
-
excessive, exaggerated, or affected piety or saintliness
Pietism
2
British
/ ˈpaɪɪˌtɪzəm /
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Pietism
1690–1700; < German Pietismus < Latin piet ( ās ) piety + German -ismus -ism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The difference was that he could not imagine finding that experience within Pietism.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 12, 2018
His faith was grounded in personal Pietism, a doctrine that ignored the political origins of injustice.
From Economist ● Mar. 28, 2018
Renewed spiritual fervor and personal conviction gripped the German churches in a movement known as Pietism.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
He does offer some valuable hints, insisting, for example, on the importanceof the 17th- and 18th-century religious revival known as Pietism, which urged believers to devote themselves to improving life on earth.
From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2010
Counterpoint was a manifestation of Lutheran Pietism in music.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
He “decries Irish society’s conservatism, pietism and blinkered nationalism” in his writing, according to an essay from the Irish Emigration Museum curator Jessica Traynor.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 17, 2019
Father James is a modest, deeply humane man of the cloth: gruff, taciturn, utterly innocent of the cruelty, corruption and overweening pietism for which the Catholic church has been criticized in recent years.
From Washington Post
Everything which even remotely smacked of mysticism and morality, of pietism and romanticism, or even of idealism, was suspected and sharply interdicted or bracketed with reservations which sounded actually prohibitive!
From Time Magazine Archive
Luce was a religious man in the best sense of that word, without a trace of pietism or holier-than-thouism.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thus it was that Francke’s name first came to be publicly associated with that of Spener, and with pietism.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 1 "Franciscans" to "French Language" by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
