Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle French culture (French culture ) action of cultivating land, plants, etc., husbandry (12th cent. in Anglo-Norman), (piece of) cultivated land (12th cent. in Anglo-Norman), formation, training (13th cent. in Anglo-Norman), worship or cult of someone or something (14th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), cultivation, development (of language, literature, etc.) (1549), mental development through education (1691), intellectual and artistic conditions of a society or the (perceived) state of development of those conditions, also the ideas, customs, etc. of a society or group (1796, after German Kultur) and its etymon classical Latin cultūra cultivation, tillage, piece of cultivated land, care bestowed on plants, mode of growing plants, training or improvement of the faculties, observance of religious rites (2nd cent. a.d. in this sense), in post-classical Latin also rites (Vetus Latina), veneration of a person (late 2nd or early 3rd cent. in Tertullian), training of the body (5th cent.) < cult- , past participial stem of colere to cultivate, to worship (see cult n.) + -ūra -ure suffix¹. In branch III., and especially in senses 6 and 7, also influenced by German Kultur, both directly and via French. The German word is a 17th-cent. borrowing < French, but the transfer of the meaning ‘state of intellectual development’ from an individual to the whole of a society occurred in German in the mid 18th cent. Compare also Spanish cultura (15th cent.), Portuguese cultura (15th cent.), Italian cultura (15th cent.).French culture shows a learned borrowing < Latin, the regular development of the Latin word being shown by Old French, Middle French couture cultivated land (12th cent.). The sense development of the word in branch III. from the 19th cent. onwards is very complex; the term is frequently distinguished from civilization n. (and to some extent also from society n.), although the precise distinctions made differ greatly. In one important tradition originating in Germany in the 18th cent., the term is used to denote the (perceived) state of development of the intellectual life of a society (compare sense 6), but this was challenged (already before the end of the 18th cent. by the German philosopher Herder) by another (countable) use with reference to the ideas, customs, etc. of a society or of a group within a society (compare sense 7); this has frequently been used in the context of rejection of normative or hierarchical conceptions of the development of society, and hence with loss of the previously transparent connection with earlier senses at branch III. Additionally, in modern use in sense 6 the term is frequently used as a general term to denote the arts and other aspects of intellectual life, without any special reference to their historical development (nor to their connection with any particular society), and hence again with less transparent connection with earlier senses of the word. For an account of this process see R. Williams Keywords (1976) at culture. Contested uses of the term are often flagged, and mocked, by the use of altered spellings, for which see culcha n. culture pearl at sense 2b is probably after Japanese yōshoku-shinju (although this is apparently first attested later (1920 or earlier); < yōshoku culture, breeding + shinju pearl, both < Middle Chinese).

Etymology: < culture n. Compare post-classical Latin culturare (9th cent. or earlier), Middle French coulturer (1323), culturer (1479). Compare later cultivate v.