The most common culture definition is the shared way of life of a group of people: the language, food, beliefs, customs, art and unwritten rules they pass from one generation to the next. When you notice that people in another city greet each other differently, eat at different hours or celebrate different festivals, you are noticing culture.
The word also has narrower uses. It can mean music, theatre and the arts, the habits of a workplace, or even bacteria grown in a lab dish. Each sense grows from one old idea: tending something so that it grows.
Entry at a glance
Meaning
The shared customs and way of life of a group; also the arts, and cells grown in a labPart of speech
Noun (main use); verb in sciencePronunciation
KUL-cherWord forms
cultures, cultural, culturally, culturedOrigin
Latin cultura, tilling or cultivationRelated terms
subculture, pop culture, counterculture, culture shockRegister
Neutral; used in daily talk, business and research
Culture definition, sense by sense
To define culture well, you need several senses, because the word works differently in a museum, an office and a lab.
- A group's way of life. The beliefs, values, language, dress, food, rituals and behavior shared by a people or community. "Japanese culture", "coastal culture".
- The arts and learning. Music, literature, painting, theatre and ideas, seen as the finer side of a society. "The city has a lively culture scene."
- The habits of a group inside a society. Shared attitudes in a company, school, team or profession. "The office culture rewards long hours."
- Personal refinement. Good taste and education; a cultured person knows the arts well. This sense is older and can sound snobbish.
- Science. Cells, bacteria or other tiny organisms grown on purpose in a lab, or the act of growing them. "The doctor sent a throat culture to the lab."
What culture includes
People who study societies often split culture into what you can see and what you cannot.
| Easy to see | Harder to see |
|---|---|
| Food, clothing, buildings | Ideas about time and being late |
| Festivals and holidays | What counts as polite or rude |
| Music, dance, language | Views on family, age and duty |
| Sports and games | Beliefs about right and wrong |
The hidden part is often the one that causes confusion when people from different backgrounds meet. A group can hold several cultures at once: a person may belong to a national culture, a regional one, a religious one and a work culture all on the same day. The field that studies all this is anthropology.
Culture in example sentences
- Moving from a small town to a big city meant learning a whole new culture of fast talk and late dinners.
- The new manager wants to build a culture where people feel safe raising problems early.
- Our school's culture week lets students cook and share dishes from their families' home regions.
- The lab technician will culture the sample for two days before checking it.
- Street food is a big part of the local culture here.
A new employee notices that nobody at her firm sends email after 7 pm, meetings always start five minutes late, and birthdays are marked with cake in the break room. None of this is written anywhere.
That set of unwritten habits is the company's culture.
Words built from culture
- Cultural: to do with culture, as in cultural festival or cultural difference.
- Subculture: a smaller group with its own style inside a larger culture, such as skateboarders or gamers.
- Pop culture: popular music, shows, trends and memes enjoyed widely at a given time.
- Counterculture: a movement that rejects the main values of its society.
- Culture shock: the confusion and stress of living in an unfamiliar culture.
- Multicultural: made up of many cultures, linked to the idea of diversity.
Where the word came from
Culture comes from Latin cultura, meaning cultivation or tilling the soil, related to colere, to tend or care for. In English it first meant preparing land for crops, which is why agriculture shares the root. By around 1500 it was also used for training the mind, and in the 19th century it came to mean the shared customs and achievements of a people. The lab sense of growing bacteria arrived in the 1880s.
Culture, society and ethnicity
These words overlap but are not the same. A society is the people themselves and the system they live in. Culture is the shared way of life they carry. Ethnicity is a group identity often based on shared ancestry, language and culture. Two people can share a society but not a culture, as in many cities where people of different backgrounds live side by side.
The word also appears in public debate, for example in arguments about which values a society should keep or change. People disagree strongly about those questions; the word itself simply names the shared way of life at stake. Related public-life vocabulary sits in our law and society hub.
Frequently asked questions
Can you explain the meaning of culture in simple words?
Culture is the way a group of people lives: what they believe, eat, wear, celebrate and consider normal. It is learned from others, not something you are born knowing.
What are examples of culture?
Language, religion, food, music, clothing, holidays, family customs and manners are all parts of culture. Workplace habits and team traditions are smaller examples.
What does work culture mean?
It means the shared attitudes, habits and unwritten rules inside an organization, such as how people communicate, dress and handle mistakes.
What is a culture in biology?
It is a sample of cells or microbes grown on purpose in a controlled setting, often to find out what is causing an infection. Culture is also the verb for growing them.
Is culture countable?
Both. As a general idea it is uncountable ("culture matters"). When you mean the ways of life of particular groups, you can say a culture or many cultures.
What does cultured mean?
A cultured person is educated and has good taste in the arts. Cultured can also describe something grown in a lab, such as cultured pearls or cultured cells.