Culture (kltr; 135), n.
Etymology: [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 theculture, 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 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.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Culture, v. t. [imp. & p.p. Cultured (-trd; 135); p. pr. & vb. n. Culturing.]
To cultivate; to educate. They came . . . into places well inhabited and cultured. Usher.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for culture; he lists it under agriculture, education, refinement.
Where he writes about it:
Gardening in general, kitchen-gardening, the cultivation of vegetables, etc., for the household, market-gardening, the raising of the same for sale, floriculture, the culture of flowers, and horticulture, the culture of fruits, flowers, or vegetables, are all departments of agriculture, but not strictly nor ordinarily of farming; farming is itself one department of agriculture. — from agriculture
Culture is now applied to the careful development of any product to a state of perfection, especially by care through successive generations; the choice varieties of the strawberry have been produced by wise and patient culture; a good crop in any year is the result of good cultivation. — from agriculture
Civilization applies to nations, denoting the sum of those civil, social, economic, and political attainments by which a community is removed from barbarism; a people may be civilized while still far from refinement or culture, but civilization is susceptible of various degrees and of continued progress. — from refinement
Cultivation, denoting primarily the process of cultivating the soil or growing crops, then the improved condition of either which is the result, is applied in similar sense to the human mind and character, but in this usage is now largely superseded by the term culture, which denotes a high development of the best qualities of man's mental and spiritual nature, with especial reference to the esthetic faculties and to graces of speech and manner, regarded as the expression of a refined nature. — from refinement
Culture in the fullest sense denotes that degree of refinement and development which results from continued cultivation through successive generations; a man's faculties may be brought to a high degree of cultivation in some specialty, while he himself remains uncultured even to the extent of coarseness and rudeness. — from refinement