culture vulture

English
WOTD – 6 March 2024

Etymology

From culture +‎ vulture.[1]

Pronunciation

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. (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
someone who engages in cultural appropriation — see cultural appropriator

References
  1. “culture vulture, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, June 2008; “culture vulture, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
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