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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
puritanism
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Clement combined his highly positive evaluation of culture with a severe puritanism towards any concessions to polytheistic myth and cult.
▪ For those raised in the prudery of puritanism or the celibacy-conscious preoccupations of Catholicism this ran against the grain.
▪ It was in no sense a revival of the political dissent symbolised by Cromwellian puritanism.
▪ She saw it as one of the major manifestations of eighteenth-century philanthropic puritanism.
▪ That was a false and sanctimonious puritanism, such as had dogged the Inquisitor's own youth.
▪ The disapproving proscriptions of puritanism could not have squeezed all impropriety from the area.
▪ The feeling is that they should be replaced by buildings constructed according to the canons of Wahhabi puritanism.
▪ There was, as we have said before, no final triumph for puritanism.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Puritanism

Puritanism \Pu"ri*tan*ism\, n. The doctrines, notions, or practice of Puritans.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Puritanism

1570s, from Puritan + -ism. Originally in reference to specific doctrines; from 1590s of excessive moral strictness generally. In this sense, famously defined by H.L. Mencken (1920) as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy."

Wiktionary
puritanism

n. (context theology English) strict and austere religious conduct

Usage examples of "puritanism".

Simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating themselves.

Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism, he liked.

Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy, the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been averted.

This is the great difference between some recent developments of Nonconformity and the great Puritanism of the seventeenth century.

My lord proposed to erect a miniature Babylon amid similar pleasant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints.

It was a back-wash of the old Augustinian Puritanism against the Aristotelian liberality.

Puritanism because, so far as I know, the inquiry has not been attempted before, and because a somewhat detailed acquaintance with the forces behind so grotesque a manifestation as comstockery, the particular business of the present essay, is necessary to an understanding of its workings, and of its prosperity, and of its influence upon the arts.

Subsequent generations came to despise him and Puritanism in general because of what he and they believed about the invisible world, which to Mather and his coreligionists consisted of demons, devils, familiars, and witches, all of which filled the air of New England, whispering into the ears of unsuspecting believers the joys of serving the devil.

In the son, individualist by temperament, once the science of colleges had replaced thoroughly the faith of conventicles, this moral attitude translated itself into a frenzied puritanism of ambition.

Purity, a young preacher against Puritanism from New England, who still seemed to be in love with Verily Cooperwho hardly noticed she was thereand Fishy, a former slave from Camelot who had become something of a great woman among the abolitionists of the north in the years since her escape.

Simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating themselves.

A Particular Faith, a carryover from the early days of Puritanism, was a divinely inspired intimation sent to men by God's angels to show them the Way.

It would, I think, require a very dedicated puritanism to deny some connection between penile or clitoral erection and sex.

It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion.

Russia has been back under the thumb of the apparatchiks for fifteen years now, its brief flirtation with anarchocapitalism replaced by Brezhnevite dirigisme and Putinesque puritanism, and it's no surprise that the wall's crumbling – but it looks like they haven't learned anything from the current woes afflicting the United States.