puritanical

[US]/pjʊərɪ'tænɪk(ə)l/
[UK]/'pjʊrə'tænɪkl/
Frequency: Very High

Translation

adj. extremely strict in morals, resembling the Puritans.

Example Sentences

a puritanical dislike of self-indulgence

he was an austere man, with a rigidly puritanical outlook.

blue laws; the puritan work ethic; puritanic distaste for alcohol; she was anything but puritanical in her behavior.

9. blue laws; the puritan work ethic; puritanic distaste for alcohol; she was anything but puritanical in her behavior.

Puritanical societies for “the suppression of vice” encouraged punitive laws against disorderly houses and streetwalking.

puritanical views on sexuality

puritanical attitude towards pleasure

a puritanical work ethic

Real-world Examples

But some more puritanical hackers have turned vigilante, trying to disrupt LulzSec.

Source: The Economist - International

It is not just drinkers who are benefiting from a loosening of puritanical regulations around America.

Source: The Economist - International

He and Parliament, which was largely puritanical, used to fight all the time about his military spending.

Source: Crash Course in Drama

The Tories, unlike the Labour Party (still puritanical and out of power since 1951), had woken up to this.

Source: The Economist - Arts

" A lot of them grow pretty puritanical" .

Source: The Long Farewell (Part 1)

Civil War now fully underway, the puritanical Parliament used the conflict as an excuse to ban theater, mostly on religious grounds.

Source: Crash Course in Drama

It was this strong family feeling which kept him a church-goer and a religious, even puritanical man in gay and pleasure-loving Paris.

Source: Modern University English Intensive Reading (2nd Edition) Volume 2

Some of these were new scions of Protestantism, with Puritanical groups emerging who had doctrinal and theological differences with the Puritans.

Source: Character Profile

One thing one notices when he writes, if he looks directly at the common people especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical.

Source: Literature

A day of fasting is not for me just a puritanical device for denying oneself a pleasure, but rather a way of anticipating a rare moment of supreme indulgence.

Source: New English Course 6

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