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acculturation

noun

Simple meaning

A process by which a person acquires the culture of the society that they inhabit, starting at birth.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

uhkuhlcherayshuhn

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

əˈkʌltʃɚˈeɪʃən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A process by which a person acquires the culture of the society that they inhabit, starting at birth.

  2. A process by which the culture of a society changes on contact with a different one.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Rare

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A process by which a person acquires the culture of the society that they inhabit, starting at birth.

'Acculturation' is a specialized term, common in sociology or anthropology, referring to adopting a new culture. It's distinct from 'assimilation,' which implies fully integrating and losing one's original culture, as acculturation can happen without that complete loss.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where you'll really hear it

  • Sociology Textbook

    “Immigrants often experience a complex process of acculturation.”

  • Academic Research Paper

    “The study examined acculturation patterns among refugee communities.”

  • Cultural Studies Lecture

    “Language acquisition is a key aspect of acculturation for newcomers.”

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

acculturation processacculturation scaleamerican acculturationacculturation modelrapid acculturationlinguistic acculturation

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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: process by which a person acquires the culture of the society that they inhabit

culturesocializationsocialisation

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.