How the OED Defines "subculture"

The Oxford English Dictionary is the mothership of the English language. As I like to describe it, it's the only English-language dictionary with all the words in it.

(BTW, you can access the OED from the "Search Online Resources" area of the Dulaney-Browne Library website.)

Here's its entry for the noun subculture:

1. 1. Biol. and Med. [SUB- 9.] A culture (of bacteria or the like) started from another culture; the process of starting a culture in this way.

1886 E. KLEIN Micro-Organisms & Dis. (ed. 3) v. 43 From the individual and separate colonies, it is then easy by re-inoculation of gelatine tubes..to start pure subcultures of the different species. 1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VII. 550 Growth..in subcultures may be recognisable within four hours. 1911 Jrnl. Path. & Bacteriol. XV. 94 In sub~culture it grew on plain agar. 1962 Lancet 5 May 933/1 Amongst the 240 staphylococcal strains tested..64 showed discrete colonies of this kind and they were tested by subculture on to the same concentration of drug. 1971 Nature 16 July 174/1 Subcultures of the bacterial cultures were carried out at 7 day intervals to maintain vigorous stocks.

2. [SUB- 7.] A group or class of lesser importance or size sharing specific beliefs, interests, or values which may be at variance with those of the general culture of which it forms part.

1936 R. LINTON Study of Man xvi. 275 While ethnologists have been accustomed to speak of tribes and nationalities as though they were the primary culture~bearing units, the total culture of a society of this type is really an aggregate of sub-cultures. 1937 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. Apr. 358 We may regard the adjusted group..as a small culture pocket or subculture within the larger culture. 1948 T. S. ELIOT Notes towards Definition of Culture iv. 75 We may find ourselves led to the conclusion, that every sub-culture is dependent upon that from which it is an offshoot. 1955 T. H. PEAR Eng. Soc. Differences iii. 111 The extravert's and the introvert's idea of good manners and goodwill, even in the same sub-culture-pattern, are very different. 1963 T. PYNCHON V. xii. 361 Anyone who continues to live in a subculture so demonstrably sick has no right to call himself well. 1970 G. JACKSON Let. 4 Apr. in Soledad Brother (1971) 214 We are a subsidiary subculture, a depressed area. 1976 DEAKIN & WILLIS Johnny go Home v. 82 The [social] workers dress like their clients... Only their accents betray them as not being part of the sub-culture they are ministering to.