1630s, "one who enforces order;" see discipline; it was earlier used (often with capital D-) of Puritans who wanted to establish the Presbyterian "discipline" in England (1580s). An earlier word in the sense "enforcer of discipline" was discipliner (mid-15c.). Meaning "advocate of greater discipline" is from 1746.
native people and language of New Mexico, 1834, from Spanish, from a local native word.
1803, of language, "exclusion of admixture of any kind," often pejorative, "scrupulous affectation of rigid purity," from French purisme (see purist + -ism). As a movement in painting and sculpture that rejected cubism and returned to representation of the physical object, by 1921, with a capital P-.
capital of the Bahamas, a name attested from 1690s, given in honor of King William III of England (1650-1702), of the House of Orange-Nassau, from the duchy of Nassau in western Germany, named for a village in the Lahn valley, from Old High German nass "wet." Related: Nassauvian.
"reproductive, budding or sprouting into new similar forms," 1868, from proliferate + -ive.
"star that suddenly increases in brightness then slowly fades," 1877, from Latin nova, fem. singular adjective of novus "new" (see new), used with stella "star" (a feminine noun in Latin) to describe a new star not previously known (Tycho Brahe's published observation of the nova in Cassiopeia in 1572 was titled De nova stella). Not distinguished from supernovae until 1930s (Tycho's star was a supernova). The classical plural is novae.
