# culture

Pronunciation: US say "KUL-chur" /ˈkʌlt͡ʃɚ/; UK say "KUL-chuh" /ˈkʌlt͡ʃə/

## Noun

1. The customs, beliefs, arts, values, and way of life shared by a particular society, nation, or people, or by humanity as a whole.
   - Simple: The ideas, customs, art, and way of life of a group of people or a country.
   - _Ancient Greek culture gave the world theater, philosophy, and the Olympic Games._
   - _Scholars debate how technology is reshaping modern culture._
2. The accepted norms, values, and ideologies of a community, forming the system that guides how a society behaves.
   - Simple: The shared rules, ideas, and values that a community agrees to follow.
   - _Reformers tried to change a political culture built on bribery and favors._
   - _The team's culture rewarded careful debate over quick decisions._
3. A person's ethnicity or race, together with the arts and customs associated with it.
   - Simple: A person's ethnic group or race, along with its art and customs.
   - _He wrote movingly about growing up between two cultures._
   - _Her culture shaped the food, music, and holidays of her childhood._
4. A population of bacteria, cells, or other microorganisms grown in an artificial medium.
   - Simple: A group of bacteria or cells grown on purpose, for example in a lab.
   - _The culture showed dense colonies after forty-eight hours of incubation._
   - _Technicians stained the culture to identify the bacteria under a microscope._
6. The process of growing bacteria or another biological organism in a prepared artificial medium.
   - Simple: The act of growing bacteria or other tiny living things in a special dish or liquid.
   - _Culture of the pathogen required a nutrient-rich medium and a sterile incubator._
   - _Successful culture of anaerobic bacteria demands the complete exclusion of oxygen._
5. Short for archaeological culture: objects found together repeatedly in one region and period, thought to represent a past society. — Ellipsis 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”).
   - Simple: Short for archaeological culture. It means the things a past people left behind that mark their way of life.
   - _The Clovis culture is identified by its distinctive stone spear points._
   - _Excavators assigned the burial site to a Bronze Age culture._
8. The tending and cultivation of plants, crops, or the soil they grow in.
   - Simple: The growing of plants or crops by working the soil.
   - _The culture of olives dates back thousands of years in the Mediterranean._
   - _The college offers courses in fruit culture, from pruning trees to controlling pests._
9. Knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not only among humans but among animals too.
   - Simple: Knowledge and habits that one generation teaches the next, even among animals.
   - _Researchers describe whale song traditions as a form of culture._
   - _Culture in animals includes learned skills like cracking nuts with stones._

## Verb

7. To keep bacteria or other organisms in conditions suitable for their growth.
   - Simple: To grow living things like bacteria by keeping them in a good place to grow.
   - _Researchers culture the cells for several weeks before testing them._
   - _Technicians cultured the sample to confirm the infection._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To increase the artistic or scientific interest in something, refining or developing it.
- (noun) The map details that do not show natural features: names and symbols for towns, roads, meridians, and parallels.

## Origin

This word comes from Middle French "culture" (cultivation; culture), from Latin "cultura" (cultivation; culture). That derived from "cultus," the perfect passive participle of "colo" (to till, cultivate, grow, or worship), and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (to move; to turn around).

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/culture (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).