high culture
Opera and ballet
High culture refers to the arts, literature, music, and intellectual pursuits traditionally associated with educated elites—opera, classical music, fine art, literary fiction.
The term implies a hierarchy separating these from popular or folk culture: The museum represented high culture at its most intimidating.
The distinction has eroded as critics question who decides what counts as elevated, though the phrase persists in cultural commentary.
- connoisseurshipRefined evaluative expertise
- good tasteSense of quality
- sophisticationCultured elegance and complexity
- fine artsCreative visual disciplines
- old mastersHistoric European artists
opera house · refinement · elite · upper crust · aesthetic value · art criticism · literary canon · cognoscenti · philistine · society · patrimony · aristocracy · folk art · bourgeois · art movements · avant-garde · art house · humanism
- culturemusic taste, beliefs, food preferences, custom, festivals
- cultural conceptstrends, movements, icons, fads, phenomena
- culturesunderground, bohemian, monoculture, intercultural, enculturation
- cultural capitaleducation, elite schools, ivy league, degrees, diplomas
- tastebitter, salty, taste, sour, sweet
- refinementrefinement, elegance, sophistication, polish, taste
high culturelow culture
Popular, non-elite entertainment
popular culture · pop culture · mass culture · lowbrow · working-class culture
high culturelowbrow
Lacking intellectual depth
middlebrow · philistinism · vulgarity · crudeness · unsophistication
high, culture, higher, highest, cultured, cultural, agriculture, heighten, cultures