cultured

1. 1
   adjective

   Well-educated and refined, familiar with art, manners, and the ways of polite society.

   She was admired as a cultured woman, fluent in three languages and well-versed in classical music.

   The diplomat's cultured conversation ranged easily from poetry to philosophy.

   Similarrefined, cultivated, sophisticated, educated, polished

   Oppositeuncultured, unrefined, philistine, boorish

2. 2
   adjective

   Produced or developed artificially under controlled conditions rather than occurring naturally.

   The facility produced cultured cells for use in the vaccine trial.

   Cultured diamonds, made in a reactor, are nearly indistinguishable from mined ones.

   Similarsynthetic, artificial

   Oppositenatural

   Note

   Here the cultivating is deliberate, and it reaches well beyond the laboratory. A cultured plant is raised under tending, and a cultured voice is one shaped by training. That second phrase sits close to the "refined" meaning, because a trained voice usually sounds a polished one. Context decides whether the speaker means skill acquired by practice or social polish.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of culture.

   Researchers cultured the virus in order to study how it spread.

   The bacteria were cultured on a special plate overnight.

   Note

   The verb is regular, so one spelling covers both the past tense (they cultured the virus) and the participle in perfects and passives (it has been cultured). It is transitive and always takes an object, usually bacteria or cells. Its other use, fostering artistic or scientific interest in something, is close kin to the "refined" adjective.

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