puritanical
Americanadjective
-
very strict in moral or religious matters, often excessively so; rigidly austere.
-
Sometimes Puritanical of, relating to, or characteristic of Puritans or Puritanism.
adjective
-
derogatory strict in moral or religious outlook, esp in shunning sensual pleasures
-
(sometimes capital) of or relating to a puritan or the Puritans
Other Word Forms
- puritanically adverb
- puritanicalness noun
- unpuritanic adjective
- unpuritanical adjective
- unpuritanically adverb
Etymology
Origin of puritanical
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.
It highlighted societal changes in Saudi Arabia that allowed edgy American comedians to perform in a country long dismissed as irredeemably puritanical and regressive.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 23, 2025
The Jesus Army church recruited thousands of people to live in close-knit, puritanical communities in Northamptonshire, London and the Midlands.
From BBC • Jul. 28, 2025
As Katharine Hepburn said in the movie, he was kind of puritanical, because those where the times back then.
From Salon • Nov. 23, 2024
Before each performance, the scene is set by a narrator who speaks in a prim, puritanical accent reminiscent of a bygone era.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 10, 2024
Other hobgoblins were the brainchildren of self-proclaimed experts who cooked up idiosyncratic theories of how language ought to behave, usually with a puritanical undercurrent in which people’s natural inclinations must be a form of dissoluteness.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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.
