If linguistic purism research frequently involves a critical, if not disdainful posture towards its research subject, this is caused by purists’ prescriptivist attitude, and their recurrent connection with ethno-linguistic nationalism, an ideology in moral disgrace. Following Pratt’s suggestion, this paper reassesses linguistic purism as the result of a utopian discourse and demonstrates how a want for (linguistic) purity is at the very core of the modernity project. It then administers this theoretical framework to the history of purism in modern (19th-21st century) Flanders.