One of my favourite finnish words, which is somewhat of a neologism, is sääntöuskovainen. A lot of finnish nouns come from verbs with different suffixes, and the word "religion", uskonto, is one of the -nto ones, like
- asunto - apartment - from "asua", "to live [in a place]"
- keksintö - invention - from "keksiä", "to invent, to come up with"
- lausunto - statement, verdict - from "lausua", "to pronounce, to speak out, to recite"
- avanto - a hole which has been cut into ice - from "avata", "to open"
- käytäntö - custom, convention, policy - from "käyttää", "to use"
So the words with the -nto suffix are somewhat of a flexible collection of "a thing which exists for this purpose, or was born from this action/activity". And the word uskonto comes from "uskoa", to believe in. Finnish has a handful of different verbs for believing something, but uskoa is the one for trusting in something, having faith in it, relying on the knowledge that something is the way one believes it is. There's a different word for not being sure of something, but suspecting that it might be true (arvella), and believing something that is wrong altogether (luulla).
So the word uskovainen, religious person, literally "believer", doesn't strictly clarify that the thing one believes in is a matter of faith, save for that being the most common and conventional use. The word "sääntö" simply means "rule" (and while it looks like one, it is actually not one of the noun-from-verb types mentioned earlier), so the word sääntöuskovainen more or less means "rule-religious". And while it could be interpreted as "person who practices their religion by strictly committing to the religion's rules", I've mainly seen it used the other way around: A person who commits to any given rules with the same reverence as a religious person practices their religion.
My sister used to have a rule-religious dog. A shepherd breed, highly intelligent, with the kind of ridig sense of righteousness and duty that medieval ideals of chivalry could only aspire for. Sirius was wasted as a family dog, to be honest. He could be set loose to the yard with no leash to go pee and play because you could absolutely trust that he would not leave the premises, he Was Not Allowed to do that with no leash on. He could do his business and throw some toys around with someone just standing at the door to supervise. Once called back inside, he could be trusted to drop everything and obey.
The dogs we had at the time had outdoor toys and indoor toys, and an understanding that they can't take inside doors outside, or outside toys outside. But this one time when I was letting him out, he managed to smuggle an inside toy out with him. I figured that screw it, he's already out with it, might as well let him play with it out there just this once. When his time was up and it was time to call him back in, he dropped the toy. I gestured him to pick up first, and bring it back inside with him.
Sirius halted, staring at me. I don't think I'm stretching it much to say that he hesitated. He had understood and followed commands more complex than that before, I have no doubt that he understood perfectly what I wanted him to do. I repeated my words and gestures, pointing at the toy and telling him what to do with it. He looked at the toy, and then back to me. Very rare dogs have the capacity to understand human gestures as nuanced as pointing at something, some even claim that no such dogs exist, but they do, and Sirius was one of them. He understood exactly what I wanted him to do.
I wanted him to break the rules. Outdoor Toys do not go indoors. He had already broken the law once by bringing it out with him, and as far as he was concerned, it had now become an outside toy. And in his heart full of canine concept of justice and righteousness, The Rules were absolute, and would not be compromised. Not even to follow a clear and explicit human command to go against them.
I had to put my shoes on and go get the toy myself.
thepleasuregoblin
