Definition of "Puritanic"

Lucy, who had only seen her in either the large loose wrapping dress of serge, or in the quaint simplicity of the Puritanic garb, then so general in England, could not restrain an exclamation of admiration as she returned to their chamber.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 110

This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender.

1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Market-Place”, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, page 62

To impute to those who do not care for the Holywell Street literature of any time “the Puritanic squeamishness of an extremely moral undetected Tartuffe, acting as Aristarchus,” is to be too zealous for unrighteousness.

1877 July 28, R. C. Browne, “Restoration Reprints”, in The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art., volume XII, number 273, London: […] Robert Scott Walker, […], page 82, column 3

The local belles and beaux, the newcomer wrote some weeks later, had found long-lasting amusement in this peculiar attempt at acquaintanceship between such dissimilar men, the dour author of the Puritanic The Scarlet Letter and the free-and-easy [Herman] Melville, author of Typee and Omoo, books which had made him the first American literary sex symbol.

2002, Hershel Parker, “Crowned and Blindsided: November–December 1851”, in Herman Melville: A Biography, volumes 2 (1851–1891), Baltimore, Md., London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, page 1