The story
From perfection + -ist.
First known use, by meaning
- from 20th c. Someone who is unwilling to settle for anything that is not perfect or does not meet extremely high standards.
- from 17th c. Someone who thinks that religious or moral perfection can be attained in this life.
- from 19th c. One of the Bible Communists or Free-lovers, a small American sect founded by J. H. Noyes (1811-86), which settled at Oneida in 1848, holding that the gospel if accepted secures freedom from sin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.