culture shock
9
4.2
- noun
- /ˈkʌltʃər ʃɑk/
:
shock cultural
- After traveling to Japan, I felt a strong culture shock due to the differences in customs and daily life.
- experience culture shock
- symptoms of culture shock
- reduce culture shock
It wasn't, it wasn't a culture shock when I moved down here in that way.
- It wasn't, it wasn't a culture shock when I moved down here in that way.
- But I need people to like, go into it not experiencing that severe culture shock.
- What's the biggest culture shock from from there to, to, to Cambridge to London?
- But yeah, for a while it was a culture shock for me because I wasn't, for lack of a better term, I wasn't used to having to baby people.
- It was just a, a culture shock in different, many different ways.
- Now that was a big culture shock because my dad was money.
- And it was, it was a culture shock a bit.
- I mean, that was a very, you know, real culture shock.
- So it was, it was very chaotic and it was a bit of a culture shock for me.
- A real as in the book that I've got for you here, You'll see it was a real culture shock.
Examples
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When I came here, it was a culture shock, to say the least.
Academic text (2016) -
Do you think you have experienced culture shock here in the U.S.?
Academic text (2012) -
So there was a little bit of a culture shock, but not too much.
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That was a major culture shock, I must say.
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Well, it was a bit of a culture shock, I have to say.
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And so it was such a culture shock moving to this country.
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It's just a total, you know, culture shock, especially for me as a boy from Scotland.
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There was a bit of culture shock at first, but I got used to it.
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This is quite the culture shock coming from Vienna to the middle of nowhere.
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Moving halfway across the country from Minneapolis to Durham, North Carolina, was a culture shock.
Academic text (2017)
How Distressed
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'culture' (shared customs/way of life) with 'shock' (a sudden strong feeling of surprise or distress), yielding the feeling caused by encountering a different culture. This noun+noun composition is a transparent, compositional pattern and has literal equivalents in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words should be able to infer the meaning.
Etymology
Culture shock comes from the image of stepping into a new culture and feeling a sudden shock, like a small electric jolt when everything seems strange. So, it means 'feeling confused and anxious' when you are in a 'different culture'.