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.
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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.
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If vain our toil
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. --Pepe.
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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.
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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.
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The list of all the items of the general life of a
people represents that whole which we call its
culture. --Tylor.
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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.
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