Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of 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.
\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.
\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. 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. 2. (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.