as in Victorian
given to or marked by very conservative standards regarding personal behavior or morals
some of the state laws concerning sexual behavior are vestiges of a more puritanical time and are rarely, if ever, enforced
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Recent Examples of puritanical
Raising the stakes were the injunctions of the Hays Code, whose puritanical rules demanded that studio filmmakers in Hollywood shy away from depictions of interracial romance.
—
Mayukh Sen, The Atlantic, 1 Mar. 2025
With their charismatic leadership, organizational skills, puritanical ideology, and internal solidarity, HTS and other militant groups were the unintended beneficiaries.
—Fawaz A. Gerges, Foreign Affairs, 27 Jan. 2025
By then, America had become a lot less puritanical.
—Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2024
Babygirl tries to deftly waltz over this minefield of a topic without a sense of puritanical judgement or heavy panting, but with as much emphasis on Romy’s need for this transfer of power to tap into her erogenous zones.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 23 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for puritanical
Mayukh Sen, The Atlantic, 1 Mar. 2025
With their charismatic leadership, organizational skills, puritanical ideology, and internal solidarity, HTS and other militant groups were the unintended beneficiaries.
—Fawaz A. Gerges, Foreign Affairs, 27 Jan. 2025
By then, America had become a lot less puritanical.
—Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2024
Babygirl tries to deftly waltz over this minefield of a topic without a sense of puritanical judgement or heavy panting, but with as much emphasis on Romy’s need for this transfer of power to tap into her erogenous zones.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 23 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for puritanical
Recent Examples of Synonyms for puritanical
Victorian
Adjective
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Paying homage to the Victorian era through a novel and contemporary Australian lens, McRae feels like a trapeze between past and present.—
Brad Japhe,
Forbes.com,
1 June 2025
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The team tested ten different approaches on 200-year-old human brain tissue recovered from Bristol’s former Blackberry Hill Hospital, once a Victorian workhouse and originally a prison for 18th-century war captives.—
Jenny Lehmann,
Discover Magazine,
30 May 2025
Cite this Entry
“Puritanical.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/puritanical. Accessed 7 Jun. 2025.
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