Who are the purists? This foreign word is not clear to everyone. As a rule, it is found in book speech and causes an association with English Protestants, Puritans. By and large, this is a true association, but the meaning of the word “purists” is not limited to this. It is associated not only with one of the religious movements, but also with language, art, literature, morality. More detailed information about who these purists will be presented in the article.
Dictionary Interpretation
In accordance with the data given in the dictionaries, “purist” is a book word and means a person who is an adherent of purism, advocating the purity of language, morals and the like. To better understand the meaning of the word “purist”, the following can be cited as examples of its use:
- Recently, linguists have announced that the word "coffee" is acceptable to use both masculine and neuter. However, purists from the language strongly oppose the second option, believing that coffee can only be “he”, but not “it”.
- The play, staged by the newly appointed director, was attended by many frivolous scenes, which, however, aroused great interest among the public. However, purist critics, as they say, smashed the performance to the nines.
According to the etymological dictionary, the studied lexeme comes from the Latin adjective purus, which has such meanings as “clean, untouched, pure, empty”.
As stated above, the purist is a derivative of purism. Therefore, it would be advisable to consider, along with the word "purists", the meaning of the second word.
Meaning of the word purism
There are several interpretations in the dictionaries. As a rule, there are four of them.
The first option involves the use of the term in literature, language, art.
Example: “Linguistic purism lies in an exaggerated desire to preserve the integrity of the norms of the language, the strictness of style, as well as in the fight against barbarism, neologisms and other stylistic innovations.”
Moral purity
The second meaning of the word is the desire for rigor and purity in the field of morals. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for Puritanism.
Example: “The purism of English Protestants in the 17th century was distinguished by such qualities as religious fanaticism, perseverance, courage, confidence in its chosenness and exclusivity, as well as asceticism and prudence in economic issues”.
Culinary purism
The third option reports that purism also exists in cooking, where it reflects the desire of cooks not to change traditions in the preparation of ethnic dishes.
Example: “The horror that a foodie experiences before using mayonnaise as a dressing is similar to that covered by a chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant when a visitor generously sprinkles ketchup on his dish. However, there are a number of dishes that without mayonnaise are not conceived even among true purists from cooking. First of all, they include the famous herring under a fur coat. ”
In french architecture
When studying the question of who these purists are, one can also consider another version of the related purism.
He talks about one of the trends observed in the late 1910-20s in architecture and painting, the main representatives of which were Le Corbusier (architect) and A. Ozenfan (artist).
Example: “Charles-Édouard Le Corbusier was a well-known French architect of Swiss origin, he was a pioneer of such trends in architecture as modernism and functionalism, or purism, and he was also an artist and designer.”
About architectural purism, we can add that his adherents, creating their works, strove for accuracy, aesthetic clarity, and authenticity of the image. The ideal proportion for them was the golden ratio, while their mannerism and decorativeness were rejected by them.