Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to popery or the papal system; of, pertaining to, or adherent to the Church of Rome and its doctrines, ceremonies, traditions, etc.; popish: commonly used opprobriously.
  • Synonyms See papal.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective derogatory Being of or connected with the Roman Catholic faith.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to or supporting Romanism

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin papisticus + -al.

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Examples

  • The followers of Archbishop Laud, who supported Charles I, had reintroduced papistical ceremonies.

    Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday Kermode, Frank 2009

  • If the patron be precise, so must his chaplain be; if he be papistical, his clerk must be so too, or else be turned out.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be UNDERSTOOD

    Areopagitica 2007

  • It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be UNDERSTOOD

    Areopagitica 2007

  • Thank God you are come home safe and sound, and without a papistical wife!

    Sir Charles Grandison 2006

  • Self-scourging with rods as a penance, was to her thinking a papistical ordinance most abominable and damnatory; but the essence of the self-scourging was as comfortable to her as ever was a hair-shirt to a Roman Catholic enthusiast.

    John Caldigate 2004

  • If any one hated papistry Mrs. Bolton did so; but from a similar action of religious fanaticism she had fallen into worse that papistical self-persecution.

    John Caldigate 2004

  • Aunt Letty, had time been allowed to her, would certainly have shown that the evil had all come from tampering with papistical abominations; and that the returning prosperity of the house of Castle

    Castle Richmond 2004

  • Mrs. Bolton was certainly not addicted to papistical observances, nor was she at all likely to recommend the seclusion of her daughter in a convent.

    John Caldigate 2004

  • Wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase PARENT OR MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds.

    Common Sense 2002

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