Weekly Etymology 002

Etymology of Culture

Today we will delve into a word often used but holds many connotations, but a very important word nonetheless.

Culture; 1868, “of or pertaining to the raising of plants or animals,” from Latin cultura"tillage, a cultivating, agriculture,“ figuratively "care, culture, an honoring,” from past participle stem of colere "to tend, guard; to till, cultivate" (see colony). Figurative senses of “relating to civilizations,” also “the cultivation of the mind,” are attested by 1875; hence, “relating to the culture of a particular place at a particular time” (by 1909).

The figurative sense of “cultivation through education, systematic improvement and refinement of the mind” is attested by c. 1500; Century Dictionary writes that it was, “Not common before the nineteenth century, except with strong consciousness of the metaphor involved, though used in Latin by Cicero.” Meaning “learning and taste, the intellectual side of civilization” is by 1805; the closely related sense of “collective customs and achievements of a people, a particular form of collective intellectual development” is by 1867.

“For without culture or holiness, which are always the gift of a very few, a man may renounce wealth or any other external thing, but he cannot renounce hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge. Culture is the sanctity of the intellect.” [William Butler Yeats]

The etymology of the modern term “culture” has a classical origin. In English, the word “culture” is based on a term used by Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", thereby using an agricultural metaphor to describe the development of a philosophical soul, which was understood teleologically as the one natural highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy is man’s natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him “refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human”.

The “term "culture,” which originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meanings in the writings of the eighteenth-century German thinkers, who on various levels developing Rousseau’s criticism of modern liberalism and Enlightenment. Thus a contrast between “culture” and “civilization” is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Two primary meanings of culture emerge from this period: culture as the folk-spirit having a unique identity, and culture as cultivation of inwardness or free individuality. The first meaning is predominant in our current use of the term “culture,” although the second still plays a large role in what we think culture should achieve, namely the full “expression” of the unique of “authentic” self.

Slang culture vulture "one voracious for culture" is from 1947. Culture shock first recorded 1940. Ironic or contemptuous spelling kulchur is attested from 1940 (Pound), and compare kultur.

This is not a total expose of the term by any means, but a launching point for you to go and cultivate yourself in mind and spirit. So get out there and discover the multilayer onion that is culture, or better yet grow some veggies in the day and cultivate yourself in the night time. Till next week, expose yourself to culture and refine yourself for your own self edification.