purity test
English
Noun
purity test (plural purity tests)
- An informal survey that assesses the participant's supposed degree of innocence in worldly matters, such as sex, drugs, and deceit.
- 2017, Jonathan P. Eburne, Benjamin Schreier, The Year's Work in Nerds, Wonks, and Neocons, page 224:
- […] popular online “purity tests,” which use a series of 500 questions about sexual experience and drug use to establish one's level of “purity.”
- (politics) A rigid standard on a specific issue by which a politician or other figure is evaluated.
- 2019, Jessica S. Mitchell, Erin N. Vaughn, Participatory Literacy Practices for P-12 Classrooms in the Digital Age, page 211:
- To begin, we return to Will: “What started as a critical reading of a children's book became a social justice 'racial equity' purity test full of hypocrisy”.
- 2025 March 17, Andrew Marantz, “The Battle for the Bros”, in The New Yorker[1], →ISSN:
- In retrospect, this was the height (or perhaps the nadir) of a kind of purity-test politics that was making some swing voters, including [Joe] Rogan, feel less at home in the Democratic coalition.
- 2025 December 21, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, quoting JD Vance, “Vance Refuses to Take Sides in G.O.P. Fight Over Bigotry”, in The New York Times[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
- “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”