culture

plural cultures · alternative pronunciation spelling culcha

1. countableuncountableThe arts, customs, lifestyles, background, and habits that characterize humankind, or a particular society or nation.

   Castration of bulls was a socialization process that turned a bull into an ox; in this transformation something wild became something very useful; nature became culture.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 125

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   Such differences of history and culture have lingering consequences. Almost all the corn and soyabeans grown in America are genetically modified. GM crops are barely tolerated in the European Union. Both America and Europe offer farmers indefensible subsidies, but with different motives.

   2013 September 7, “Farming as rocket science”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8852

2. countableuncountableThe beliefs, values, behaviour, and material objects that constitute a people's way of life.

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   I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; […]

   1882, Matthew Arnold, “Sweetness and Light”, in Culture and Anarchy

3. countableuncountableThe conventional conducts and ideologies of a community; the system comprising the accepted norms and values of a society.

   Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution.

   2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 05 Sep 2015, page 164

4. countableuncountableanthropologyAny knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not necessarily with respect to human beings.
5. countableuncountableagricultureCultivation.

   http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/grownet/flowers/sprgbulb.htm The Culture of Spring-Flowering Bulbs

6. countableuncountablebiologyThe process of growing a bacterial or other biological entity in an artificial medium.
7. countableuncountableThe growth thus produced.

   I'm headed to the lab to make sure my cell culture hasn't died.

8. countableuncountableA group of bacteria.
9. countableuncountablecartographyThe details on a map that do not represent natural features of the area delineated, such as names and the symbols for towns, roads, meridians, and parallels.
10. abbreviationcountableellipsisuncountablearchaeologyEllipsis of archaeological culture (“recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society”).
11. countableeuphemisticuncountableEthnicity, race (and its associated arts, customs, etc.).

present singular third person cultures · participle present culturing · participle past cultured · past cultured · alternative pronunciation spelling culcha

1. transitiveto maintain in an environment suitable for growth (especially of bacteria) (compare cultivate)
2. transitiveto increase the artistic or scientific interest (in something) (compare cultivate)