CIVILIZATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does civilization mean? 

• CIVILIZATION (noun)
  The noun CIVILIZATION has 4 senses:

1. a society in an advanced state of social development (e.g., with complex legal and political and religious organizations)

2. the social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organization

3. a particular society at a particular time and place

4. the quality of excellence in thought and manners and taste

  Familiarity information: CIVILIZATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CIVILIZATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A society in an advanced state of social development (e.g., with complex legal and political and religious organizations)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

civilisation; civilization

Context example:

the people slowly progressed from barbarism to civilization

Hypernyms ("civilization" is a kind of...):

society (an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization)

Domain category:

government; political science; politics (the study of government of states and other political units)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "civilization"):

Islam; Muslimism (the civilization of Muslims collectively which is governed by the Muslim religion)

Derivation:

civilize (raise from a barbaric to a civilized state)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organization

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural processes

Synonyms:

civilisation; civilization

Hypernyms ("civilization" is a kind of...):

social process (a process involved in the formation of groups of persons)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A particular society at a particular time and place

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

civilisation; civilization; culture

Context example:

early Mayan civilization

Hypernyms ("civilization" is a kind of...):

society (an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization)

Meronyms (parts of "civilization"):

subculture (a social group within a national culture that has distinctive patterns of behavior and beliefs)

Domain category:

archaeology; archeology (the branch of anthropology that studies prehistoric people and their cultures)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "civilization"):

Aegean civilisation; Aegean civilization; Aegean culture (the prehistoric civilization on the islands in the Aegean sea and the surrounding countries)

Helladic civilisation; Helladic civilization; Helladic culture (the bronze-age culture of mainland Greece that flourished 2500-1100 BC)

Indus civilization (the bronze-age culture of the Indus valley that flourished from about 2600-1750 BC)

Minoan civilisation; Minoan civilization; Minoan culture (the bronze-age culture of Crete that flourished 3000-1100 BC)

Mycenaean civilisation; Mycenaean civilization; Mycenaean culture (the late bronze-age culture of Mycenae that flourished 1400-1100 BC)

Paleo-American culture; Paleo-Amerind culture; Paleo-Indian culture (the prehistoric culture of the earliest human inhabitants of North America and South America)

Western civilization; Western culture (the modern culture of western Europe and North America)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The quality of excellence in thought and manners and taste

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

civilisation; civilization; refinement

Context example:

he is remembered for his generosity and civilization

Hypernyms ("civilization" is a kind of...):

excellence (the quality of excelling; possessing good qualities in high degree)

Derivation:

civilize (teach or refine to be discriminative in taste or judgment)

 Context examples 

Amid efforts to find alien life, scientists have not yet confirmed the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization.

(Finding Alien Life Unlikely Due to Lack of Phosphorus in Universe, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

He would go away into the heart of the wilderness, and never again appear in civilization.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Yonder, beyond the violet, hazy horizon, was the stream which led back to civilization.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The researchers used a remote sensing method known as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to discover the hidden treasures of a civilization that National Geographic now compares to ancient Greece or China.

(Hidden Mayan Civilization Revealed in Guatemala Jungle, VOA)

In the past, plague destroyed entire civilizations.

(Plague, NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Earlier this year, Harvard researchers speculated that these radio bursts could be “beams set up by extragalactic civilizations to potentially power light sails.”

(Mysterious Radio Signals Detected from Deep Space, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The South Seas charmed him no more than did bourgeois civilization.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Thousands of years ago, Plato wrote about the civilization, noting that its incredible technological advancements and wealth had no equal and that the city was ultimately destroyed by some terrible event.

(Researchers Claim to Have Found Mythical City of Atlantis in Spain, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)