Adjacent Words

Culture definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

CULTURE, n. [L. See Cultivate.]
1. The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops; cultivation; the application of labor or other means of improvement.
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.
2. The application of labor or other means to improve good qualities in, or growth; as the culture of the mind; the culture of virtue.
3. The application of labor or other means in producing; as the culture of corn, or grass.
4. Any labor or means employed for improvement, correction or growth.
CULTURE, v.t. To cultivate.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a particular society at a particular time and place; "early Mayan civilization" [syn: culture, civilization, civilisation]
2: the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
3: all the knowledge and values shared by a society [syn: acculturation, culture]
4: (biology) the growing of microorganisms in a nutrient medium (such as gelatin or agar); "the culture of cells in a Petri dish"
5: a highly developed state of perfection; having a flawless or impeccable quality; "they performed with great polish"; "I admired the exquisite refinement of his prose"; "almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art"--Joseph Conrad [syn: polish, refinement, culture, cultivation, finish]
6: the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization; "the developing drug culture"; "the reason that the agency is doomed to inaction has something to do with the FBI culture"
7: the raising of plants or animals; "the culture of oysters" v
1: grow in a special preparation; "the biologist grows microorganisms"

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English, cultivated land, cultivation, from Anglo-French, from Latin cultura, from cultus, past participle Date: 15th century 1. cultivation, tillage 2. the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education 3. expert care and training <beauty culture> 4. a. enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training b. acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills 5. a. the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b. the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture> c. the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization <a corporate culture focused on the bottom line> d. the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic <studying the effect of computers on print culture> <changing the culture of materialism will take time — Peggy O'Mara> 6. the act or process of cultivating living material (as bacteria or viruses) in prepared nutrient media; also a product of such cultivation II. transitive verb (cultured; culturing) Date: 1510 1. cultivate 2. a. to grow in a prepared medium b. to start a culture from

Britannica Concise

Integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that is both a result of and integral to humankind's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Culture thus consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. Variation among cultures is attributable to such factors as differing physical habitats and resources; the range of possibilities inherent in areas such as language, ritual, and social organization; and historical phenomena such as the development of links to other cultures. An individual's attitudes, values, ideals, and beliefs are greatly influenced by the culture (or cultures) in which he or she lives. Culture change takes place as a result of ecological, socioeconomic, political, religious, or other fundamental changes affecting a society. See also culture contact, primitive culture, sociocultural evolution.

U.S. Military Dictionary

(*) A feature of the terrain that has been constructed by man. Included are such items as roads, buildings, and canals; boundary lines; and, in a broad sense, all names and legends on a map.

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & v. --n. 1 a the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively (a city lacking in culture). b a refined understanding of this; intellectual development (a person of culture). 2 the customs, civilization, and achievements of a particular time or people (studied Chinese culture). 3 improvement by mental or physical training. 4 a the cultivation of plants; the rearing of bees, silkworms, etc. b the cultivation of the soil. 5 a quantity of micro-organisms and the nutrient material supporting their growth. --v.tr. maintain (bacteria etc.) in conditions suitable for growth. Phrases and idioms: culture shock the feeling of disorientation experienced by a person suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture or way of life. culture vulture colloq. a person eager to acquire culture. the two cultures the arts and science. Etymology: ME f. F culture or L cultura (as CULT): (v.) f. obs. F culturer or med.L culturare

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Culture Cul"ture, n. 1. (Biol.) (a) The cultivation of bacteria or other organisms in artificial media or under artificial conditions. (b) The collection of organisms resulting from such a cultivation.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Culture Cul"ture (k?l"t?r; 135), n. [F. culture, L. cultura, fr. colere to till, cultivate; of uncertain origin. Cf. Colony.] 1. The act or practice of cultivating, or of preparing the earth for seed and raising crops by tillage; as, the culture of the soil. 2. The act of, or any labor or means employed for, training, disciplining, or refining the moral and intellectual nature of man; as, the culture of the mind. If vain our toil We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. --Pepe. 3. The state of being cultivated; result of cultivation; physical improvement; enlightenment and discipline acquired by mental and moral training; civilization; refinement in manners and taste. What the Greeks expressed by their paidei`a, the Romans by their humanitas, we less happily try to express by the more artificial word culture. --J. C. Shairp. The list of all the items of the general life of a people represents that whole which we call its culture. --Tylor. Culture fluid, a fluid in which the germs of microscopic organisms are made to develop, either for purposes of study or as a means of modifying their virulence.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Culture Cul"ture, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cultured (-t?rd; 135); p. pr. & vb. n. Culturing.] To cultivate; to educate. They came . . . into places well inhabited and cultured. --Usher.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(cultures, culturing, cultured) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. Culture consists of activities such as the arts and philosophy, which are considered to be important for the development of civilization and of people's minds. ...aspects of popular culture. ...France's Minister of Culture and Education. 2. A culture is a particular society or civilization, especially considered in relation to its beliefs, way of life, or art. ...people from different cultures... I was brought up in a culture that said you must put back into the society what you have taken out. N-COUNT 3. The culture of a particular organization or group consists of the habits of the people in it and the way they generally behave. But social workers say that this has created a culture of dependency, particularly in urban areas... N-COUNT: usu with supp 4. In science, a culture is a group of bacteria or cells which are grown, usually in a laboratory as part of an experiment. (TECHNICAL) ...a culture of human cells. N-COUNT 5. In science, to culture a group of bacteria or cells means to grow them, usually in a laboratory as part of an experiment. (TECHNICAL) To confirm the diagnosis, the hospital laboratory must culture a colony of bacteria. VERB: V n

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

kul'-tur: Found only in 2 Esdras 8:6 the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), "give .... culture to our understanding," i.e. to nourish it as seed in the ground.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Agriculture, tillage. 2. Improvement, refinement, cultivation, civilization.

Foolish Dictionary

A degree of mental development that produces tailor-made women, fantastically-sheared poodles and dock tailed horses.

Moby Thesaurus

Acheulean, Aurignacian, Azilian, Chellean, Eolithic, Neolithic, Paleolithic, Pre-Chellean, Solutrean, acculturation, acquired taste, agrarianism, agricultural geology, agriculture, agrology, agronomics, agronomy, appreciation of excellence, background, backset, bibliolatry, bibliomania, bluestockingism, book learning, book madness, bookiness, bookishness, booklore, breed, breeding, cation, choiceness, civility, civilization, civilized taste, civilizedness, class, classical scholarship, classicism, community, complex, contour farming, contour plowing, cultivate, cultivated taste, cultivating, cultivation, cultural drift, culture area, culture center, culture complex, culture conflict, culture contact, culture pattern, culture trait, customs, cut, daintiness, delicacy, delve, dig, dirt farming, discernment, discrimination, donnishness, dress, dressing, dry farming, dryland farming, education, elegance, enculturation, enlightenment, eruditeness, erudition, ethnic group, ethos, excellence, fallow, fallowing, farm, farm economy, farming, fastidiousness, fatten, feed, fertilize, finesse, folkways, force, fruit farming, furrowing, genteelness, gentility, gentlemanlikeness, gentlemanliness, gentleness, geoponics, good breeding, good taste, grace, gracefulness, gracility, graciosity, graciousness, grain farming, grow, harrow, harrowing, hatch, hoe, hoeing, humanism, humanistic scholarship, husbandry, hydroponics, intellectualism, intellectuality, intensive farming, keep, key trait, ladylikeness, learnedness, learning, letters, list, listing, literacy, mixed farming, mores, mulch, nation, nationality, niceness, nicety, nurture, pedantism, pedantry, people, plow, plowing, polish, prune, pruning, quality, race, raise, rake, ranch, reading, rear, refinement, run, rural economy, savoir faire, savoir-faire, scholarship, sharecropping, socialization, society, sophist, sophistication, spade, speech community, stock, strain, strip farming, suavity, subsistence farming, subtlety, tank farming, taste, tastefulness, thin, thin out, thinning, thremmatology, till, till the soil, tillage, tilling, tilth, trait, trait-complex, truck farming, urbanity, way of life, weed, weed out, weeding, work, working