According to the Cambridge Dictionary, culture refers to the way of life of a certain group of people, at a certain period of time, as far as their ordinary behaviour and habits, attitudes toward each other, and moral and religious beliefs are considered; it is expressed by describing, showing, or performing all the above through literature, art, music, dance, theatre, etc. (Cambridge Dictionary: entry culture).  

The term “culture” corresponds to the set of norms, practices and values that characterize either a majority or a minority group (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: entry Culture). Hence, culture, a complex of features, is related to a specific group, being for example as small as a family or a tribe, or as large as an ethnic group or a nation (New World Encyclopaedia, entry Culture).

UNESCO (2001) defines culture as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.

The word culture, has a Latin root, deriving from the verb colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honour) (New World Encyclopaedia).

Following D. Jury & J. Jury (1999) culture is called “the way of life for an entire society, including codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behaviour such as law and morality, and systems of belief”. It is a dynamic process due to the fact that its subject, the society, responds to any changing conditions and challenges.   

Alfre L. Kroeber & Clyde Kluckhohn (1952) made a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture, while they classify them into eight categories, such as topical, historical, behavioural, functional, etc.

Taking into account all the above meanings of the word culture, we may conclude to the anthropological definition provided by Henry Pratt Fairchild (1944) at his Dictionary of Sociology, referring to as follows: “A collective name for all behaviour patterns socially acquired and transmitted by means of symbols: hence a name for all the distinctive achievements of human groups including not only items such language, tool-making, industry, art, science, law, government, morals and religion, but also the material instruments or artefacts in which cultural achievements are embodied and by  which intellectual cultural features are given practical effect, such as buildings, tools, machines, communication devices, art objects, etc.”.  

Hence, as Kluckhohn (1954) wrote "Culture is to society what memory is to individuals”.