Culture
Ancient Romans did not generally differentiate between rats and mice, instead referring to the former as mus maximus (big mouse) and the latter as mus minimus (little mouse).
On the Isle of Man (a dependency of the British Crown), there is a taboo against the word "rat".
Read more about this topic: Rat
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“Sanity consists in not being subdued by your means. Fancy prices are paid for position, and for the culture of talent, but to the grand interests, superficial success is of no account.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)