culture
from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
culture
n 1: a particular society at a particular time and place; "early
Mayan civilization" [syn: {culture}, {civilization},
{civilisation}]
2: the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social
group
3: all the knowledge and values shared by a society [syn:
{acculturation}, {culture}]
4: (biology) the growing of microorganisms in a nutrient medium
(such as gelatin or agar); "the culture of cells in a Petri
dish"
5: a highly developed state of perfection; having a flawless or
impeccable quality; "they performed with great polish"; "I
admired the exquisite refinement of his prose"; "almost an
inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is
almost art"--Joseph Conrad [syn: {polish}, {refinement},
{culture}, {cultivation}, {finish}]
6: the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a
particular social group or organization; "the developing drug
culture"; "the reason that the agency is doomed to inaction
has something to do with the FBI culture"
7: the raising of plants or animals; "the culture of oysters"
v 1: grow in a special preparation; "the biologist grows
microorganisms"
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
If vain our toil
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. --Pepe.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
The list of all the items of the general life of a
people represents that whole which we call its
culture. --Tylor.
[1913 Webster]
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}.
[Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]
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.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]
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.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]
{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.
[1913 Webster +PJC]
from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
192 Moby Thesaurus words for "culture":
Acheulean, Aurignacian, Azilian, Chellean, Eolithic, Neolithic,
Paleolithic, Pre-Chellean, Solutrean, acculturation,
acquired taste, agrarianism, agricultural geology, agriculture,
agrology, agronomics, agronomy, appreciation of excellence,
background, backset, bibliolatry, bibliomania, bluestockingism,
book learning, book madness, bookiness, bookishness, booklore,
breed, breeding, cation, choiceness, civility, civilization,
civilized taste, civilizedness, class, classical scholarship,
classicism, community, complex, contour farming, contour plowing,
cultivate, cultivated taste, cultivating, cultivation,
cultural drift, culture area, culture center, culture complex,
culture conflict, culture contact, culture pattern, culture trait,
customs, cut, daintiness, delicacy, delve, dig, dirt farming,
discernment, discrimination, donnishness, dress, dressing,
dry farming, dryland farming, education, elegance, enculturation,
enlightenment, eruditeness, erudition, ethnic group, ethos,
excellence, fallow, fallowing, farm, farm economy, farming,
fastidiousness, fatten, feed, fertilize, finesse, folkways, force,
fruit farming, furrowing, genteelness, gentility,
gentlemanlikeness, gentlemanliness, gentleness, geoponics,
good breeding, good taste, grace, gracefulness, gracility,
graciosity, graciousness, grain farming, grow, harrow, harrowing,
hatch, hoe, hoeing, humanism, humanistic scholarship, husbandry,
hydroponics, intellectualism, intellectuality, intensive farming,
keep, key trait, ladylikeness, learnedness, learning, letters,
list, listing, literacy, mixed farming, mores, mulch, nation,
nationality, niceness, nicety, nurture, pedantism, pedantry,
people, plow, plowing, polish, prune, pruning, quality, race,
raise, rake, ranch, reading, rear, refinement, run, rural economy,
savoir faire, savoir-faire, scholarship, sharecropping,
socialization, society, sophist, sophistication, spade,
speech community, stock, strain, strip farming, suavity,
subsistence farming, subtlety, tank farming, taste, tastefulness,
thin, thin out, thinning, thremmatology, till, till the soil,
tillage, tilling, tilth, trait, trait-complex, truck farming,
urbanity, way of life, weed, weed out, weeding, work, working
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