Dictionary

culture hero en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) A mythical character or real person who is renowned as the exemplar of the values or achievements of a society, group, or time period.
   • [T]he U.S. has long been the Land of Efficiency. . . . Here mass production was born, the assembly line for good or ill became the modern cornucopia, and Henry Ford once reigned as the leading culture hero. 1970 March 23, “Business: America the Inefficient”, in Time:
   • A precisely similar notion was found by Avila among the Indians of Huarochiri, whose divine culture-hero imposed, by a curse or a blessing, their character and habits on the beasts. 1886, Andrew Lang, chapter 6, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion:
   • [T]hese were mostly Russian intellectuals, hard-core Stalinists, and democratic socialists . . . whose book-lined apartments were filled with leftist tracts and records by the Red Army Chorus and the black American Communist culture hero Paul Robeson. 2006 October 1, Edward Kosner, “First Chapter: It’s News to Me”, in New York Times, retrieved 04 Jun 2013:

Forms

Relateds

folk hero

Translations (6)

ru культу́рный геро́й (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society) · de Kulturheros (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society) · fr héros culturel (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society) · ja 文化英雄 (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society) · cmn 文化英雄 (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society) · fi tarusankari (person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society)