| 释义 |
▪ I. culture, n.|ˈkʌltjʊə(r)|
[a. F. culture (in OF. couture), ad. L. cultūra cultivation, tending, in Christian authors, worship, f. ppl. stem of colĕre: see cult.]
†1. Worship; reverential homage. Obs. rare.
1483Caxton Gold. Leg. 81/1 Whan they departe fro the culture and honour of theyr god.
2. a. The action or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage, husbandry; = cultivation 1.
c1420Pallad. on Husb. i. 21 In places there thou wilt have the culture. 1613R. C. Table Alph. (ed. 3) Culture, husbandry, tilling. 1665–9Boyle Occas. Refl. (1675) 320 Such a..plot of his Eden..gratefully crowns his Culture..with chaplets of Flowers. 1707Curios. in Husb. & Gard. 3 Man was..imploy'd in the Culture of the Garden. 1806Gazetteer Scot. (ed. 3) 296 The soil is clay, and difficult of culture. 1866Rogers Agric. & Prices I. 11 The same kinds of grain..are sown..and the same mode of culture is adopted.
†b. Cultivated condition. Obs.
1538Starkey England i. i. 12 The erth..by..dylygent labur..ys brought to maruelous culture and fertylite.
†c. concr. A piece of tilled land; a cultivated field. Obs.
1557MS. Indenture 30 June, [Conveying] a culture of land called the flatte, in Brantingham, Yks. 1560Whitehorne Arte of Warre (1573) 27 b, Euery culture where bee Vines and other trees lettes the horses. 1757Dyer Fleece (R.), From their tenements..proceeds the caravan Through lively spreading cultures, pastures green.
3. a. The cultivating or rearing of a plant or crop; = cultivation 2.
1626Bacon Sylva §402 These..were slower than the ordinary Wheat..and this Culture did rather retard than advance. 1697Dryden Virg. Georg. i. 78 The Culture suiting to the sev'ral Kinds Of Seeds and Plants. 1750Johnson Rambler No. 33 ⁋2 The fruits, which without culture fell ripe into their hands. 1856Emerson Eng. Traits, Ability Wks. (Bohn) II. 42 [England] is too far north for the culture of the vine. 1887Pall Mall G. 15 Oct. 11/2 There are eighty acres devoted to bulb culture.
b. transf. The rearing or raising of certain animals, such as fish, oysters, bees, etc., or of natural products such as silk. culture pearl = cultured pearl.
1796Morse Amer. Geog. I. 679 The culture of silk. 1862Cornh. Mag. V. 201 The dredgers at Whitstable have so far adopted oyster culture. 1886Pall Mall G. 23 Sept. 6/2 In the interests of bee-culture, and in the search of improved races of bees. 1921Current Hist. July 623/1 Jewelers in London have been greatly perturbed over a new type of [Japanese] ‘culture’ pearls which is said to be so perfect that it cannot be distinguished from the natural article. 1937Discovery Mar 87/1 X-ray photographs of culture pearls. 1963Times 12 Mar. (Austral. Suppl.) p. v/7 Culture-pearl farms.
c. The artificial development of microscopic organisms, esp. bacteria, in specially prepared media; concr. the product of such culture; a growth or crop of artificially developed bacteria, etc. Also applied to the similar growth of plant and animal cells and tissues, and of whole organs or fragments of them. Also in Comb., as culture-fluid, culture-tube, etc.; culture medium, a substance, solid or liquid, in or on which micro-organisms, tissues, etc., are cultured.
1880G. M. Sternberg tr. Magnin's Bacteria ii. i. 113 Cohn, in order..to get rid of the moulds,..employed the following culture-fluid. 1884Klein Micro-Organisms (1886) 94 When cultures of this bacterium are kept for some time..their virulence becomes diminished. Ibid. 39 A series of new culture-tubes. Ibid., A culture-fluid..that contains..various species of organisms. 1885C. S. Dolley Technol. Bacteria Invest. i. ii. 59 Sterilizing the culture medium is accomplished ordinarily by the use of heat sufficient to kill all germs. 1890Jrnl. Chem. Soc. LVII. 487 Experiments upon the culture of excised barley embryos on nutrient liquids. 1910A. Carrel in Jrnl. Amer. Med. Assoc. 15 Oct. 1379/2 The plasmatic media were inoculated with many tissues or organs, of which all were found to multiply or grow. The cultures of the different tissues—as we shall call them—contain common characteristics. 1914Jrnl. Exper. Med. XIX. 398 (heading) The effect of dilution of plasma medium on the growth and fat accumulation of cells in tissue cultures. 1938R. C. Parker Methods Tissue Culture xvi. 208 The method of tissue culture has also served as a direct means of studying the further development of complex structures and organ rudiments. 1939F. A. Knott Clin. Bacteriol. ii. 19 The culture medium chosen depends upon the variety of bacterium sought. 1953Sci. Progr. XLI. 212 Earle and his collaborators..have devised methods for obtaining mass cultures of unorganised tissue from an initial cell suspension or a single cell. 1960L. Picken Organization of Cells iii. 83 The presence of minute amounts of penicillin in the culture medium leads to the production of various abnormal forms of bacteria. 1965White & Grove Proc. Internat. Conf. Plant Tissue Culture 9 Experiments with excised roots as organ cultures. Ibid. 28 Sterile seedlings of tomato..were grown in 50 ml of the inorganic solution of the standard root culture medium. 1970tr. G. Le Douarin in J. A. Thomas Organ Culture ii. 17 The patella of a 9-day chick embryo developed cartilage after 3 days of culture.
†d. The training of the human body. Obs.
1628Hobbes Thucyd. i. vi, Amongst whom [the Lacedaemonians]..especially in the culture of their bodies, the nobility observed the most equality with the commons. 1793Beddoes Let. Darwin 60 To suppose the organization of man equally susceptible of improvement from culture with that of various animals and vegetables.
4. fig. The cultivating or development (of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.); improvement or refinement by education and training.
c1510More Picus Wks. 14 To the culture and profit of theyr myndes. a1633S. Lennard tr. Charron's Wisd. (1658) 174 Necessary for the culture of good manners. 1651Hobbes Leviath. ii. xxxi. 189 The education of Children [is called] a Culture of their mindes. 1752Johnson Rambler No. 189 ⁋12 She..neglected the culture of [her] understanding. 1848Macaulay Hist. Eng. II. 55 The precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried. 1865Dale Jew. Temp. xiv. (1877) 155 The Jewish system was intended for the culture of the religious life of the Jews.
5. a. absol. The training, development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners; the condition of being thus trained and refined; the intellectual side of civilization.
1805Wordsw. Prelude xiii. 197 Where grace Of culture hath been utterly unknown. 1837Emerson Jrnl. 24 Nov. (1910) IV. 371 It seems to me that the circumstances of man are historically somewhat better here and now than ever,—that more freedom exists for Culture. 1849J. A. Froude Nemesis of Faith x. 85 The end of all culture is, that we may be able to sustain ourselves in a spiritual atmosphere as the birds do in the air. 1855J. Conington Academical Study of Latin (1872) I. 212 That part of our culture which we have not worked out for ourselves, or received from contemporary nations, we owe almost wholly to Rome, and to Greece only through Rome. 1860Motley Netherl. (1868) I. ii. 47 His culture was not extensive. 1869M. Arnold (title) Culture and anarchy. Ibid. ii. 49 The great men of culture are those who have had a passion..for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time. 1871Geo. Eliot Middlem. i. ix. 137 He wants to go abroad again..[for] the vague purpose of what he calls culture, preparation for he knows not what. 1876M. Arnold Lit. & Dogma xiii, Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world. 1889Jessopp Coming of Friars iii. 131 Some few of the larger..monasteries..[were] centres of culture. a1893Mod. A man of considerable culture. 1916E. Wharton Xingu i. 3 Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. 1939tr. H. Johst in C. Leiser Nazi Nuggets 83 When I hear the word ‘culture’ I slip back the safety-catch of my revolver. 1940K. Mannheim Man & Society ii. ii. 85 The crisis of culture in liberal-democratic society is due, in the first place, to the fact that the social processes, which previously favoured the development of the creative élites, now have the opposite effect. 1948T. S. Eliot Notes Def. Culture ii. 41 Culture is not merely the sum of several activities, but a way of life. Ibid. 42 Group culture..has never been co-extensive with class. Ibid. 43 The primary channel of transmission of culture is the family.
¶ With distortion of spelling to indicate affected or vulgar pronunciation.
1931Atlantic Monthly Feb. 149/2 They believe in ‘cultchah’. 1959Listener 15 Jan. 128/2 Italian Bouquet, an Epicurean Tour of Italy..an American hotchpotch of culcher and food.
b. (with a and pl.) A particular form or type of intellectual development. Also, the civilization, customs, artistic achievements, etc., of a people, esp. at a certain stage of its development or history. (In many contexts, esp. in Sociology, it is not possible to separate this sense from sense 5 a.)
1867Freeman Norm. Conq. (1876) I. iv. 150 A language and culture which was wholly alien to them. 1871E. B. Tylor (title) Primitive culture. 1891Spectator 27 June, Speaking all languages, knowing all cultures, living amongst all races. 1903C. Lumholtz Unknown Mexico I. 117 A thrifty people whose stage of culture was that of the Pueblo Indians of to-day. 1921R. A. S. Macalister Text-bk. Europ. Archæol. I. iv. 99 A language associated with a superior culture has always a tendency to swamp languages that have not such an advantage. 1921E. Sapir Language x. 222 Historians and anthropologists find that races, languages, and cultures are not distributed in parallel fashion. 1942Bloch & Trager Outl. Ling. Analysis 5 The activities of a society—that is, of its members—constitute its culture... Language, then, is not only an element of culture itself; it is the basis for all cultural activities. 1948T. S. Eliot Notes Def. Culture i. 28 The culture with which primitive Christianity came into contact..was itself a religious culture in decline. Ibid. v. 93 A careful fostering [by Russia in its satellites] of local ‘culture’, culture in the reduced sense of the word, as everything that is picturesque, harmless and separable from politics such as language and literature, local arts and customs. 1953A. K. C. Ottaway Education & Society i. 8 A single word to express ‘the whole life of a community’ is a special use of the word ‘culture’, which has been developed by the social anthropologists. 1954S. Piggott Neolithic Cultures v. 123 Probably the word culture should be employed to define the collective and tangible outcome (pot-making, house-planning, tomb-building) of the material and spiritual traditions of a group of people. 1963Brit. Jrnl. Sociol. XIV. 21 By ‘culture’ is meant the whole complex of learned behaviour, the traditions and techniques and the material possessions, the language and other symbolism, of some body of people.
c. Phr. the two cultures: see quot. 1956.
1956C. P. Snow in New Statesman 6 Oct. 413/1 The separation between the two cultures has been getting deeper under our eyes; there is now precious little communication between them... The traditional culture..is, of course, mainly literary..the scientific culture is expansive, not restrictive. 1959― Two Cultures & Sci. Revol. 16 Those in the two cultures can't talk to each other..very little of twentieth-century science has been assimilated into twentieth-century art. 1961Listener 16 Nov. 809/1 The lack of communication between scientists and non-scientists, which has been so much discussed recently in terms of ‘the two cultures’. 1967‘W. Haggard’ Conspirators ii. 14 He could explain things to laymen simply, despising ill-digested chatter about two cultures.
d. attrib. and Comb., as culture-condition, culture-instinct, culture-monger, etc.; culture-loving ppl. adj.; culture shock: see shock n.3 4 d; culture vulture, a rhyming collocation indicating a person who is voracious for culture.
1889G. B. Shaw London Music (1937) 201 The race of culture humbugs. 1897M. Kingsley W. Africa 28 The present culture-condition of West Africa. Ibid. Pref. p. ix, Your superior culture-instincts may militate against your enjoying West Africa. 1905Daily Chron. 15 June 3/1 The culture-loving Catholic Gael. 1909Westm. Gaz. 2 Jan. 11/2 A modernised, constitutional, culture-loving Turkish State. 1931A. Huxley Music at Night 226 Most professional intellectuals will approve of culture-snobbery (even while intensely disliking most individual culture-snobs). 1933Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. XXXIX. 301 (title) The bureaucratic culture pattern and political revolution. 1938Dylan Thomas Let. 23 Mar. (1966) 190 Advanced writing..sells very well over there [America], they're such culture-snobs. 1939‘M. Innes’ Stop Press iii. iii. 376 You couldn't have a more persistent culture-hound. 1947in Wentworth & Flexner Dict. Amer. Slang (1960) 134/2 Everybody can't be a culture vulture. a1953Dylan Thomas Quite Early One Morning (1954) 67 See the garrulous others, also, gabbing and garlanded from one nest of culture-vultures to another. 195520th Cent. June 536 An attack on contemporary ‘Culture’-mongers. 1960Koestler Lotus & Robot 279 Literacy, culture-hunger and leisure-time are increasing even more rapidly than the birth-rate. 1964Amer. Speech XXXIX. 46 The Caribs were very great travelers, and their words became culture words, words found in all the Indian languages on the Caribbean Sea. Ibid. 50 These pirates could have made a culture word of America. 1966L. J. Cohen Diversity of Meaning i. 15 We also have the notion of a culture-word or culture-sentence, as when a historian of ideas is concerned with the meaning of the word ‘mass’ in seventeenth-century physics.
Also spec. in Anthropol. and Sociol. (In some contexts the meaning shades into an attrib. use of sense 5.)
1901Contemp. Rev. Mar. 455 The ancient ‘culture-heroine’. 1903Daily Chron. 11 June 3/1 The hero-tales and culture-legends of the prehistoric period of the Hebrews. 1907A. C. Haddon in N. W. Thomas Anthropol. Ess. 183 The death dances were introduced into the Western Islands by two culture heroes from New Guinea. 1921E. Sapir Language x. 223 That a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial group or a culture area is easily demonstrated. 1922D. H. Lawrence Fantasia of Unconscious xi. 203 The woman is now the responsible party, the law-giver, the culture-bearer. 1931H. J. Rose tr. W. Schmidt's Orig. & Growth Relig. v. xiv. 221 Leo Frobenius, a pupil of Ratzel, enlarged..the doctrine of ‘culture-circles’ (or ‘spheres’, Kulturkreise). 1933Downside Rev. LI. 185 Russia is a culture-complex in itself, and Russia's problem is not ours. 1936Mind XLV. 294 In the modern world, with its ever-increasing facilities for culture-contacts, a world-culture is in process of formation. 1945Mind LIV. 78 The culture-hero has a vague complex status, part man, part demi-god. 1948T. S. Eliot Notes Def. Culture iv. 70 Since..the scattering of Jews amongst peoples holding the Christian Faith, it may have been unfortunate..that the culture-contact between them has had to be within those neutral zones of culture in which religion could be ignored. 1949M. Mead in M. Fortes Social Structure 27 Teacher, physician, nurse..each in turn represents some different form of culture conflict. 1951R. Firth Elem. Social Organiz. iii. 81 Terms such as ‘culture-contact’..were introduced to express the way in which new patterns of behaviour or types of relationship were acquired and incorporated into a primitive system. Ibid. 109 He is culture-bound in his desires as well as his activities. 1953Proc. Prehist. Soc. XIX. 41 (title) The prehistoric culture-sequence in the Maltese Archipelago. 1957Burlington Mag. Nov. 246/2 A theory of culture-circles whereby societies are classified as hunting, food-gathering, harvesting and horticultural. 1960Listener 18 Aug. 244/1 The people of the host country appear to lack the normal conventions of social behaviour or to have a different and apparently illogical system... Most Europeans in Africa withdraw into their own community, and quickly equate their own way of doing things with their own superior material culture... This reaction..has been called ‘culture shock’. 1962D. Harden Phoenicians i. 24 To pick out what is Egyptian and Mesopotamian among finds and culture-traits in Phoenicia is not nearly so hard. Ibid. ii. 25 Their position on the land-route between the two great culture-areas of antiquity laid them open to constant political domination and cultural influences from each. 1969Listener 30 Jan. 155/2 There was a curious naivety..in the frank description of how destructive, physically and socially, the culture-contacts with these remote peoples could be.
6. The prosecution with special attention or study of any subject or pursuit; = cultivation 3. (rare.)
1876Bancroft Hist. U.S. I. Introd., An earnest culture of the arts of peace.
Add:[5.] [d.] culture-bound a., restricted in character, outlook, etc. by belonging to a particular culture; determined or limited by the presuppositions of one's culture (further examples).
1951R. Firth Elem. Social Organiz. iii. 109 He is culture-bound in his desires as well as his activities. 1963J. Lyons Structural Semantics iv. 76 Let us here assume that the linguist has provisionally identified as the same situational context (itself ‘culture-bound’) the events and activities which constitute making a purchase in a shop. 1980English World-Wide I. i. 4 Unmistakable culture-bound specimens like passages from an Onitsha Market novel, or Indian matrimonial advertisements.
▪ II. culture, v.|ˈkʌltjʊə(r)|
[a. F. culture-r (15th c.), f. culture: see prec.]
trans. To subject to culture, to cultivate: a. lit. (the soil, plants.) Now chiefly poetic. Now rare.
1510Caxton's Chron. Eng. iv. F v a/1, 2000 plowmen..for to culture the lande. 1555Eden Decades 29 The Region was inhabyted and well cultured. 1634Sir T. Herbert Trav. 3 They cultured the earth with hornes of Goats and Oxen. 1735Thomson Liberty ii. 162 In Countries cultur'd high: In ornamented Towns, where Order reigns. 1809J. H. Wiffen Aonian Hours (1820) 51 The lovely maid..Culturing roses with her spade. 1844De Quincey Logic Pol. Econ. 142 note, The capital being gone which should have cultured the estates. 1855–61[see cultured 1].
b. fig. (arts, the mind, persons, etc.) Now rare.
1776S. J. Pratt Pupil Pleas. II. 89 Our minds are not all formed or cultured alike. 1808J. Barlow Columb. ix. 498 And if, while all their arts around them shine, They culture more the solid than the fine. 1863M. Howitt F. Bremer's Greece I. i. 13 A race and a city which they have contributed to culture in the noblest sense of the word.
c. Biol. To maintain (bacteria or other micro-organisms, tissues, organs, etc.) under artificial conditions in a suitable nutrient medium so that they can multiply, grow, or develop.
1908Practitioner Sept. 463 The ovary and tube (unopened) were despatched..with a request to see what organism could be cultured, and to make a vaccine. 1934Huxley & de Beer Elem. Exper. Embryol. vii. 209 Fibroblasts of the fowl have been cultured in vitro for over 20 years..and show unchanged characters and an unchanged rate of growth. 1962C. V. Harding et al. in A. Pirie Lens Metabolism Rel. Cataract 460 The lens had been cultured for two days in 199 with 23% rabbit serum ultrafiltrate. 1971Nature 16 Apr. 472/2 We decided to isolate and culture the bacteria. Ibid. 474/1 A technique for culturing green organisms such as filamentous algae and moss protonema on an agar substrate.
▪ III. culture
obs. form of coulter. |