culture hero

See also: culture-hero

English

Alternative forms

• culture-hero

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Noun

culture hero (plural culture heroes)

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.
   • 1886, Andrew Lang, chapter 6, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion:

     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.

   • 1970 March 23, “Business: America the Inefficient”, in Time:

     [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.

   • 2006 October 1, Edward Kosner, “First Chapter: It’s News to Me”, in New York Times, retrieved 4 June 2013:

     [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.

Translations

person renowned as the exemplar of the values of a society

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 文化英雄 (wénhuà yīngxióng)

• Finnish: tarusankari
• French: héros culturel (fr)
• German: Kulturheros
• Japanese: 文化英雄 (bunka eiyū)
• Russian: культу́рный геро́й m (kulʹtúrnyj gerój)

See also

• folk hero

References

• “culture hero”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.