Multicultural

How to spell multicultural

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce multicultural

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does multicultural mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or made up of several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within one society.

Multicultural in a sentence

• The city's multicultural neighbourhoods host festivals from every continent.

• The company runs a multicultural training programme for its global staff.

Where does multicultural come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern compound built from two older Latin pieces. The prefix multi- comes from the Latin multus, meaning 'much' or 'many', the same element that gives English words such as multiple and multitude. The second part traces to the Latin cultura, meaning 'a tilling, tending, or cultivation', from the verb colere, 'to till the soil' or 'to care for'; over centuries that farming sense broadened into the idea of cultivating the mind, and eventually into 'culture' as the customs and arts of a people. The full word multicultural is a twentieth-century formation, gaining wide currency in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in Canada, to describe societies made up of many distinct cultural groups. Because the joins between multi-, cultur-, and -al are clean and predictable, the spelling rarely springs a surprise, though writers sometimes pause over whether to hyphenate it.

How the word is built

• multi- (many)
• cultur (from Latin cultura: cultivation, tending)
• -al (adjective suffix)