CULTURE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Culture

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/kˈəltʃər/ Listen

noun

Culture n.

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."

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 paideia, the Romans by their humanitas, we less happily try to express by the more artificial word culture." "The list of all the items of the general life of a people represents that whole which we call its culture."

4.

(Biol.)

(a)

The cultivation of bacteria or other organisms (such as fungi or eukaryotic cells from mulitcellular organisms) in artificial media or under artificial conditions.

(b)

The collection of organisms resulting from such a cultivation. Note: The growth of cells obtained from multicellular animals or plants in artificial media is called tissue culture. Note: The word is used adjectively with the above senses in many phrases, such as: culture medium, any one of the various mixtures of gelatin, meat extracts, etc., in which organisms cultivated; culture flask, culture oven, culture tube, gelatin culture, plate culture, etc.

5.

(Cartography) Those details of a map, collectively, which do not represent natural features of the area delineated, as names and the symbols for towns, roads, houses, bridges, meridians, and parallels.

Culture fluid, Culture medium a fluid in which microscopic organisms are made to develop, either for purposes of study or as a means of modifying their virulence. If the fluid is gelled by, for example, the use of agar, it then is called, depending on the vessel in which the gelled medium is contained, a plate, a slant, or a stab.

verb

Culture v. t. (past & past part. cultured; pres. part. culturing) To cultivate; to educate. "They came... into places well inhabited and cultured."

See images of 'Culture'

Etymology of 'Culture'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Culture" Quotes from Famous Books

... it may be observed, that it cannot, in the nature of things, be determined by general principles, but must depend upon the size, soil, facilities of culture, and demand for corn in the country in question. We know that it answers to almost all small well-peopled states, to import their corn; and there is every reason to suppose, that even a large landed nation, abounding in a manufacturing population, and having cultivated all ...

— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus

... circumstances of life in which the two friends grew up. Rembrandt was the son of a miller, and had his own way to make in the world. Jan Six was surrounded from his earliest years with everything which tended to the gratification of his natural taste for culture. Rembrandt's rare talent, however, overbalanced any lack of early advantages, and made ...

— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... population, prate of the rights of our "black brothers," and argue as if the latter thought, judged, amused themselves, or, in short, behaved, as the white men do, who have the advantage of hundreds of years of culture. ...

— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... about them? I cannot and need not say much more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits. In Emily's nature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life; she would ...

— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte

... in the group of domestic animals. In searching the monuments of the ancients, which have furnished the foundation for our present culture, that is, of the littoral inhabitants of the Mediterranean, and of the people of Mesopotamia, we find in Egypt the first traces of the horse. But even here it appears late, on the monuments of the first ruling patricians of human origin.[2] Especially during the period of Memphis ...

— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

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