Puritan work ethic
Diligence as virtue
The Puritan work ethic is the belief that hard work, discipline, and frugality are moral virtues—signs of good character or divine favor.
The phrase evokes the religious convictions of early American Protestants, who saw industriousness as a spiritual duty.
Today it describes any strong commitment to diligence over leisure: His Puritan work ethic kept him at the office until midnight.
Often shortened to work ethic alone.
- frugalityEconomical resource management
- diligenceCareful, persistent effort
- hardworkingCommitted to sustained effort
- laborStrenuous effort; also childbirth
- grindCrush into particles
nose to the grindstone · industriousness · workaholic · values · toil · blue laws · predestination · self-reliance · bootstrap mentality · plain living · moral discipline · austerity · Calvinism · delayed gratification · sweat · sanctification · productivity · time is money
- colonial faithPilgrims, Puritans, Calvinism, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony
Puritan work ethiclaziness
Unwillingness to exert oneself
sloth · idleness · indolence · loafing · malingering
Puritan work ethichedonism
Pursuit of gratification
epicureanism · pleasure principle · self-indulgence · sybaritism · voluptuousness
Puritan work ethicbohemianism
Artistic rejection of convention
la dolce vita · lying flat · joie de vivre · Mediterranean lifestyle · counterculture
Puritan, puritan, puritanical, puritanism, pure, purity, purify, purification, purifier