puritanical

• Puritanical

From puritanic +‎ -al.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pjʊəɹ.ɪˈtæn.ɪ.kəl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /pjɚ.ɪˈtæn.ɪ.kl̩/

puritanical (comparative more puritanical, superlative most puritanical)

1. Of or pertaining to the Puritans, or to their doctrines and practice.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 192:

     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.

2. Precise in observance of legal or religious requirements; strict; overscrupulous; rigid (often used by way of reproach or contempt).
   • 1910, James George Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, volume 1, page xiv:

     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.

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.

—A. Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

puritanical (plural puritanicals)

1. One who holds puritanical attitudes.

• unpiratical