puritanical

Definition

Of or pertaining to the Puritans, or to their doctrines and practice.

Etymology

From puritanic + -al.

Example Sentences

• "The host proposed divers puritanical fancies—nay, once hinted at a head of Cromwell himself; but the hostess overruled all these proposals, and stood firm by the Sun."
• "Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant."
• "Exogamy […] has few or none of the quaint superstitions which lend a certain picturesque charm to totemism. It is, so to say, a stern Puritanical institution. Its rigid logic, its complex rules, its elaborate terminology, its labyrinthine systems of relationship, it presents an aspect somewhat hard and repellant."