"masscult" meaning in All languages combined

See masscult on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: mass + cult, coined by Dwight Macdonald in the essay Masscult and Midcult (1960). Etymology templates: {{compound|en|mass|cult}} mass + cult, {{coin|en|Dwight Macdonald|nobycat=1|nocap=1}} coined by Dwight Macdonald Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} masscult (uncountable)
  1. The modern industrial equivalent of culture, mass-produced and anonymously consumed, without specialization or connoisseurship. Tags: uncountable
    Sense id: en-masscult-en-noun-4DO1bhVm Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for masscult meaning in All languages combined (2.2kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "mass",
        "3": "cult"
      },
      "expansion": "mass + cult",
      "name": "compound"
    },
    {
      "args": {
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        "2": "Dwight Macdonald",
        "nobycat": "1",
        "nocap": "1"
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      "expansion": "coined by Dwight Macdonald",
      "name": "coin"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "mass + cult, coined by Dwight Macdonald in the essay Masscult and Midcult (1960).",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "masscult (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: midcult"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996 September 22, Michiko Kakutani, “The Trickle-Down Theory”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "In a famous 1960 essay, Macdonald identified three sorts of cultures: High Culture (think Cezanne and Eliot), which articulates an artist's idiosyncratic and often demanding vision; Masscult (Norman Rockwell and Erle Stanley Gardner), which tries “to please the crowd by any means,” and Midcult (Pearl Buck and Thornton Wilder), which disguises Masscult's reliance on formula with pretentious allusions.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 June 29, The New York Times, “Jazz Listings”, in New York Times",
          "text": "★ THE BAD PLUS (Tomorrow) With its fifth studio album, “Prog” (Do the Math), this trio ventures further along a distinctive and adventurous path; the bassist Reid Anderson, the pianist Ethan Iverson and the drummer David King sound as committed as ever, and their alchemy of masscult allusions and highbrow inventions still has the power to overwhelm.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The modern industrial equivalent of culture, mass-produced and anonymously consumed, without specialization or connoisseurship."
      ],
      "id": "en-masscult-en-noun-4DO1bhVm",
      "links": [
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        ],
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      "tags": [
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  "word": "masscult"
}
{
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      "name": "coin"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "mass + cult, coined by Dwight Macdonald in the essay Masscult and Midcult (1960).",
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
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      "expansion": "masscult (uncountable)",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: midcult"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996 September 22, Michiko Kakutani, “The Trickle-Down Theory”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "In a famous 1960 essay, Macdonald identified three sorts of cultures: High Culture (think Cezanne and Eliot), which articulates an artist's idiosyncratic and often demanding vision; Masscult (Norman Rockwell and Erle Stanley Gardner), which tries “to please the crowd by any means,” and Midcult (Pearl Buck and Thornton Wilder), which disguises Masscult's reliance on formula with pretentious allusions.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 June 29, The New York Times, “Jazz Listings”, in New York Times",
          "text": "★ THE BAD PLUS (Tomorrow) With its fifth studio album, “Prog” (Do the Math), this trio ventures further along a distinctive and adventurous path; the bassist Reid Anderson, the pianist Ethan Iverson and the drummer David King sound as committed as ever, and their alchemy of masscult allusions and highbrow inventions still has the power to overwhelm.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The modern industrial equivalent of culture, mass-produced and anonymously consumed, without specialization or connoisseurship."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "industrial",
          "industrial"
        ],
        [
          "equivalent",
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        ],
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        ],
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          "specialization",
          "specialization"
        ],
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          "connoisseurship",
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      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "word": "masscult"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-04 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e9e0a99 and db5a844). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.