Sabbatarian

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A person who observes or advocates strict adherence to religious rest on the seventh day of the week, or one who believes in the mandatory cessation of work on this holy day
2. a person who strictly observes or mandates rest and abstinence from work on the seventh day for religious reasons
3. one who practices or promotes the religious observance of the weekly day of rest with rigorous adherence to its prohibitions

Etymology: The Hebrew word "shabbat" (rest) gave Greek "sabbaton," which Latin borrowed as "sabbatum," and the Church eventually turned it into a weekday label. A sabbatarian, then, is someone whose whole identity is built around that seventh-day rest. The English word appeared around 1610, when Latin-derived terms for the Sabbath were being used in theological debate about how strictly Christians should keep it. The ending does most of the work. The "-arian" suffix, borrowed through Medieval Latin "sabbatarius," marks a person who holds to a particular doctrine or practice, the same pattern as "unitarian" or "libertarian." So the word names a believer in a rule, not simply someone who rests on a Sunday.