Masscult
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The modern industrial equivalent of culture, mass-produced and anonymously consumed, without specialization or connoisseurship. uncountable
"In a famous 1960 essay, Macdonald identified three sorts of cultures: High Culture (think Cezanne and Eliot), which articulates an artist's idiosyncratic and often demanding vision; Masscult (Norman Rockwell and Erle Stanley Gardner), which tries “to please the crowd by any means,” and Midcult (Pearl Buck and Thornton Wilder), which disguises Masscult's reliance on formula with pretentious allusions."
Example
More examples"In a famous 1960 essay, Macdonald identified three sorts of cultures: High Culture (think Cezanne and Eliot), which articulates an artist's idiosyncratic and often demanding vision; Masscult (Norman Rockwell and Erle Stanley Gardner), which tries “to please the crowd by any means,” and Midcult (Pearl Buck and Thornton Wilder), which disguises Masscult's reliance on formula with pretentious allusions."
Etymology
From mass + cult, coined by Dwight Macdonald in the essay Masscult and Midcult (1960).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.