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Glite Dictionary
🌏 To adapt for culture 👧 To learn customs
to enculturate

to enculturate

9.2
Change something so it fits local customs and values
  • verb
  • /ɪnˈkʌltʃəˌreɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : aculturar
  • Without an institutionalized church to enculturate values, education and thought become critical, and this is partly why he wrote Crisis in the Muslim Mind (personal communication).

Examples

  • Nothing these men relish more than enculturating Packy Carroll.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • In addition to establishing a collaborative and cooperative culture and a value structure that respects individual capabilities, a system was put into place to enculturate new personnel so as to maintain it.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Yes, overload it by not providing the takers with any more cash to pay for benefits or control of those institutions that enculturate and communicate the propaganda necessary for their control of the electorate and the direction of our culture, government policy, and future.

    Blog text (9)

  • Schools aim to enculturate students into the traditions and values of their community.

  • Community programs are designed to enculturate immigrants by teaching them local customs.

  • The workshop will help participants enculturate diverse cultural experiences into their art.

Synonyms

to assimilate
vsto enculturate
77 6.1

Become similar to other people by joining their group and learning their customs

change things so they match a culture's values and expectations
to acculturate
vsto enculturate
  • Specialized
1 8.2

Learn and use the customs and ways of another group

adapt items to fit a culture's customs and expectations
to naturalize
vsto enculturate
  • US
1 6.0

To make a plant, word, or custom become common in a new place

focus on making items fit social customs rather than any environment

Antonyms

to alienate
123 6.7

To make someone feel alone and lose support from others

How Adapted

to localize
  • Specialized
9 4.2
to enculturate
  • Specialized
9.2
to adapt
178 3.2
to modify
268 3.2
to leave it be
  • Informal
1 5.1

Surface Forms

enculturate infinitive
enculturated past
enculturated past participle
enculturating present participle
enculturates third person singular

Morphology

enculturate = enculture (transparent) = en + culture + ate

The verb is straightforwardly built from 'enculture' with the suffix '-ate', yielding the sense 'make or adapt to a culture'.

Etymology

Enculturate comes from the part en- meaning 'in' and the word culture, which comes from a word about cultivate that means 'to tend' or 'help grow'. So to enculturate a product is like 'planting' it into a culture—changing it so it can fit, grow, and feel natural there.