civilization

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French civilisation.

Pronunciation

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Audio (US):(file)

Noun

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civilization (countable and uncountable, plural civilizations)

  1. An organized culture encompassing many communities, often on the scale of a nation or a people; a stage or system of social, political, or technical development.
    the Aztec civilization
    Western civilization
    Modern civilization is a product of industrialization and globalization.
    • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., pages rise and fall:
      But civilizations, like the penis, rise and fall, and when the towers and battlements crumble into the earth, they return to the embrace of the Great Mother.
  2. (uncountable) Human society, particularly civil society.
    A hermit doesn't much care for civilization.
    I'm glad to be back in civilization after a day with that rowdy family.
    • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 159:
      Civilisation has imbued man's minds with false ideas of the evil of sex and its fulfilment.
  3. The act or process of civilizing or becoming civilized.
    The teacher's civilization of the child was no easy task.
  4. The state or quality of being civilized.
    He was a man of great civilization.
  5. (obsolete) The act of rendering a criminal process civil.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Proper noun

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civilization

  1. (inherently emic, sometimes capitalized) Collectively, those people and places of the world considered to have a high standard of behavior and / or a high level of development. Commonly subjectively used by people of one society to exclusively refer to their society, or their elite sub-group, or a few associated societies, implying all others, in time or geography or status, as something less than civilised, as savages or barbarians. (Compare refinement, elitism, civilised society, the Civilised World.
    Antonyms: wilderness, wilds; anecumene (archaic)
    Coordinate terms: frontier, outlands, wastelands
    Near-synonym: ecumene (archaic)
    Some of the tourists in the upcountry might have embarrassed themselves if they'd been capable of having any shame, whining that they couldn't wait to get back to civilization.

Translations

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References

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