Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Jump To:
  • Pietism
    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
    pietism
    noun
    a less common word for piety
Synonyms

Pietism

American  
[pahy-i-tiz-uhm] / ˈpaɪ ɪˌtɪz əm /

noun

  1. a movement, originating in the Lutheran Church in Germany in the 17th century, that stressed personal piety over religious formality and orthodoxy.

  2. the principles and practices of the Pietists.

  3. (lowercase) intensity of religious devotion or feeling.

  4. (lowercase) exaggeration or affectation of piety.

    Synonyms:
    sanctimony

pietism 1 British  
/ ˈpaɪɪˌtɪzəm /

noun

  1. a less common word for piety

  2. excessive, exaggerated, or affected piety or saintliness

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Pietism 2 British  
/ ˈpaɪɪˌtɪzəm /

noun

  1. history a reform movement in the German Lutheran Churches during the 17th and 18th centuries that strove to renew the devotional ideal

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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

The girl is obviously intended to personify what is false in Spanish pietism; the uncle signifies the sickness of the ruling classes.

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

By his subjective pectoral theology he became the father of modern scientific pietism, but it incapacitated him from understanding the longing of the age for the restoration of a firm objective basis for the faith.

From Church History, Vol. 3 of 3 by J. H. Kurtz

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

Get a word

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 14,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training