Now somewhat rare. [a. F. culture-r (15th c.), f. culture: see prec.] trans. To subject to culture, to cultivate: a. lit. (the soil, plants.) Now chiefly poetic.
1510. Caxton’s Chron. Eng., IV. F v a/1. 2000 plowmen … for to culture the lande.
1555. Eden, Decades, 29. The Region was inhabyted and well cultured.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 3. They cultured the earth with hornes of Goats and Oxen.
1735. Thomson, Liberty, II. 162. In Countries cultur’d high: In ornamented Towns, where Order reigns.
1809. Wiffen, Aonian Hours (1820), 51. The lovely maid … Culturing roses with her spade.
1844. De Quincey, Logic Pol. Econ., 142, note. The capital being gone which should have cultured the estates.
1855–61. [see CULTURED 1].
b. fig. (arts, the mind, persons, etc.).
1776. S. J. Pratt, Pupil Pleas., II. 89. Our minds are not all formed or cultured alike.
1808. J. Barlow, Columb., IX. 498. And if, while all their arts around them shine, They culture more the solid than the fine.
1863. Mary Howitt, trans. F. Bremer’s Greece, I. i. 13. A race and a city which they have contributed to culture in the noblest sense of the word.
