culture

Forms

culture f (plural cultures)^[1] Old French colture (about 1150); the spelling culture is a learned remaking of the 14th century.^[2][3] The regular inherited form was Old French couture “cultivated field”.^[3][4][5] Anglo-Norman forms include colture, coture and cuture.^[6]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cultūra (“cultivation of the land, cultivation of the mind, worship”),^[2][3][7] from cultus, the perfect passive participle of colō (“to till, cultivate, worship”),^[1][8][9] from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to move, turn”).^[1] Rey glosses the root as “to take care of”, which led on one side to “to live in and work (a place)” and on the other to “to honour as sacred”.^[3]

The form colture (about 1150) was remade after the Latin in the 14th century.^[3][2] The regular Old French outcome of the Latin word was couture, used for a cultivated field, which survives in some northern dialects and in Normandy.^[4][3][2] Likewise the Latin participle gave both coutiver and cultiver.^[3]

Cognate with Italian coltura and Spanish cultura.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

As colture it is first found about 1150 in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, meaning “cultivated land”; this sense, used especially in customary law, is recorded until Cotgrave (1611).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Culture and culte, whose senses overlapped at first, gradually drew apart.^[3] In 1420 culture still meant “the act of honouring, worship”.^[2] The sense “working of the land” is recorded from 1509, in Octavien de Saint-Gelais.^[2][9] It was then used of the growing of particular plants (1596) and the rearing of animals (1845),^[9] and in 1878 of the growing of micro-organisms (culture microbienne).^[2]

In the 16th century the word also took up the Latin moral sense “development of the faculties of the mind”: Du Bellay speaks of the culture of a language in 1549.^[2][3] It is used without a complement for the training of the mind from 1691 (La Bruyère).^[2][3] At the end of the 18th century, translations of Kant used it for German Kultur, the collective intellectual character of a people, a sense close to civilisation (1796); Mme de Staël used it in 1810, but it spread only in the 20th century.^[2][3] Under the influence of German and of English ethnologists' usage, it received its anthropological sense, “the acquired forms of behaviour of a human society”, in Marcel Mauss's work of about 1923, partly in opposition to the hierarchical notion of civilization.^[2][3] Culture physique “physical exercise” is recorded in 1808.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1150 – Colture “cultivated land” appears in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne.^[2]
• 14th century – The learned spelling culture is recorded.^[2][3]
• 1420 – Used for the act of honouring, worship.^[2]
• 1509 – Octavien de Saint-Gelais uses it for the cultivation of the land.^[2][9]
• 1549 – Du Bellay applies it to the cultivation of a language.^[2][3]
• 1611 – Last record of the old sense “cultivated land”, in Cotgrave.^[2][3]
• 1691 – La Bruyère uses it absolutely for the training of the mind.^[2][3]
• 1796 – A translation of Kant uses it for German Kultur.^[2]
• 1808 – Culture physique is recorded.^[2]
• 1878 – Culture microbienne appears.^[2]
• c. 1923 – Marcel Mauss gives it its ethnological sense.^[2][3]
• 1929 – The derivative culturel is formed after German kulturell.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The cultivation of the land, farming: mettre une terre en culture.^[10][2]
2. (in the plural) Cultivated land, fields under crops.^[10]
3. The growing of a particular plant: la culture des tomates.^[10][5]
4. (biology) The growing of micro-organisms in a suitable medium, and the result, a culture.^[10][2][1]
5. The development of the mind through study; the knowledge a person has acquired, erudition: culture générale.^[10][1]
6. The intellectual and artistic life of a society or civilization; in anthropology, the body of acquired behaviour of a human group.^[2][3][1]
7. Culture physique: physical exercise, gymnastics.^[2]

Word family

• culturel
• monoculture
• polyculture

Related words

• cultiver
• culte
• couture
• agriculture
• Latin cultūra

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b c Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
5. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 1504a
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c d Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
10. ^ a b c d e Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert