cultured, ppl. a.
(ˈkʌltjʊəd)
[f. culture v. and n. + -ed.]
Cultivated.
1. lit. a. of soil or plants. (Chiefly poetic.)
| 1743–6 Shenstone Elegies xxv, Our cultur'd vales. 1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. III. 655 The cultured fields and the stately mansions of the Seine. 1861 Mrs. Norton Lady La G. (1862) 102 Cultured shrubs and flowers together blent. |
b. Developed under controlled natural conditions, esp. cultured pearl. Cf. culture n. 3 b.
| 1921 Current Hist. July 623/2 It is quite impossible to tell the natural pearl from the cultured pearl. 1930 Pop. Sci. Dec. 45/3 Like ‘natural’ pearls, the cultured product can be dissolved in acids. 1940 Chem. Abstr. XXXIV. 4700 An x-ray study of aragonite in natural and cultured pearls. |
2. fig. Improved by education and training; characterized by intellectual culture; refined.
| [1764 Goldsm. Trav. 236 The gentler morals, such as play Thro' life's more cultur'd walks.] 1777 Gamblers 5 Young Pollio's cultur'd muse. 1860 Tyndall Glac. i. i. 7 A cultured man of science. 1865 Whittier Snow-bound 521 Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. |
¶ With distortion of spelling to indicate affected or vulgar pronunciation.
| 1929 Galsworthy Exiled 1, Quate! 'Ow culchad! Hairs and grices! 1940 H. G. Wells Babes in Darkling Wood iv. i. 324 He likes treading out music with a pianola, for example, to the great disdain of the culchad Trotsky. |