puritan

1. 1.

   a member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought that the Protestant Reformation under Elizabeth was incomplete and advocated the simplification and regulation of forms of worship

   BroaderProtestant
2. 2.

   someone who adheres to strict religious principles; someone opposed to sensual pleasures

   Broaderabstainer
3. 3.

   a person excessively concerned about propriety and decorum

   Synonymsprude

   Broaderunpleasant person

Other forms of puritan

plural

puritans·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about puritan

What does puritan mean?

puritan means "a member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought that the Protestant Reformation under Elizabeth was incomplete and advocated the simplification and regulation of forms of worship". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in puritan?

puritan has 3 syllables: pur-i-tan. The stress falls on "pur". In IPA it is /ˈpjʊɹətən/.

What is another word for puritan?

Close synonyms include prude. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is puritan a common word?

puritan is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.