Acculturates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of assimilating into a foreign culture while retaining characteristics of the original culture occurs during this process of cultural blending
2. This process involves the adaptation to a new cultural context while still holding onto elements of one's native culture
3. The process in which individuals or groups adopt cultural traits from another society while maintaining aspects of their original culture defines this phenomenon

Etymology: "Acculturates" is the third-person singular present form of "acculturate," a verb that English formed by working backwards from a noun. The noun "acculturation" came first, and "acculturate" was back-formed from it, first appearing in 1923. A back-formation is a word created by removing what looks like a suffix from an existing word, so "acculturation" (the "-ation" ending marks a noun of process) was shortened to the verb "acculturate" in the same way that "edit" was once derived from "editor." The prefix "ac-" is a form of Latin "ad-," meaning "to" or "toward," and "culture" comes from Latin "cultura," which relates to tending or cultivating. Together the parts suggest moving toward a cultivated way of life, though the word's sense of taking on another group's customs was developed in the twentieth century, when anthropologists and sociologists needed precise terms for contact between peoples.

Synonyms: adapt, assimilate, integrate

Antonyms: isolate, segregate