culture (n.)
The Latin cultura meant cultivation or tending. It came from colere, a verb used for working the land and caring for things. The connection with agriculture was already a metaphor in Roman writing. Cicero used cultura animi, the cultivation of the mind.1
English borrowed culture in the fifteenth century for the working of land. By about 1500, it could also describe the development of the mind through education. A person could be cultivated, with learning understood as something that required care and time to grow.2
The word later acquired broader meanings. In the nineteenth century it was used for intellectual and artistic life, and for the shared customs and achievements of a people. These senses are now so familiar that the farming behind the word can be easy to miss.2
Laboratory usage preserves another branch of that history. Growing microorganisms in a suitable environment came to be called a culture too. The connection is still cultivation, applied to a different kind of growth.2
Food is an important part of the region’s culture.