culture vulture: difference between revisions

English

WOTD – 2 March 2024

Etymology

From culture +‎ vulture.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃə ˌvʌlt͡ʃə/
• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃəɹ ˌvʌlt͡ʃəɹ/
• Hyphenation: cult‧ure vult‧ure

Noun

culture vulture (plural culture vultures) (informal)

1. (humorous) A person with a rapacious, sometimes inauthentic, interest in the arts. [from early 20th c.]
   • 1920, The Canadian Historical Review, volume 39, page 241:

     […] -- unless of course “culture” is thought to be something decoratively added when all else has been accomplished, the fairy on the Christmas tree: an approach which opens wide the way for culture-vultures and peddlars of arty gentility, upon whom “culture” sits (to misuse an image of T. S. Eliot's) like a silk hat upon a Bradford millionaire.

   • 1970 March 9, “The Culture Vulture's Swoop through Dry Dock Country”, in New York Magazine, vol. 3, no. 10, 13:

     Around 59th and Lexington, where Dry Dock Savings Bank is located, pickings are lush for the purple-pantsuited culture vulture.

   • 1984, Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson, Michael Hamburger, Goethe Revisited: A Collection of Essays:

     […] we can see that this is a man of the living theatre who was not interested in a culture-vulture audience.

   • 2001, Christine Olga Kiebuzinska, Intertextual Loops in Modern Drama:

     […] a failed composer who thinks himself to be Webern's successor, and his pretentious wife, a culture vulture.

   • 2008, Susie Whalley, Lisa Jackson, Running Made Easy:

     Be a culture vulture by going to the ballet, opera or a classical concert.

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 151–152:

     A through northbound service to Finsbury Park […] was the 'Theatre Express'. It was meant to serve theatre-goers who lived on the main-line stops beyond Finsbury Park, say, Enfield. […] But there weren't enough culture vultures in places like Enfield to justify the service.

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?)(derogatory) An artist who copies rather than creating original work.
3. (sociology, derogatory, slang) Someone who engages in cultural appropriation; a cultural appropriator. [from c. 1990]
   • 2020, Robin Throne, Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit, section 135:

     However, a different indigenous researcher sees the use of restorative justice circles by nonindigenous people as being more of culture vultures and taking culture applicable to them and ignoring a brutal history of abuse, oppression, and genocide.

   • 2022, Mike D'Errico, Push: Software Design and the Cultural Politics of Music Production, Oxford University Press, page 43:

     Think about Diplo, EDM producer-DJ and oft-accused “culture vulture,” whose modus operandi involves applying Western, Eurocentric, and Americanized EDM styles to samples from global dance music communities.

Alternative forms

• culture-vulture (dated)

Translations

person with a rapacious, sometimes inauthentic, interest in the arts

• Finnish: kulttuurihaukka
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can

someone who engages in cultural appropriation — see cultural appropriator