This contribution to the critical discussion of Ryszard Nycz’s Culture as Verb draws on his use of the parts-of-speech model to submit another formula of conceptualizing culture, based on the adverb, and complementary to the already existing approaches. They can be divided into three classes: those that treat culture as adjective (i.e. all epiphenomenal interpretations which view culture as a set of attributes), those that treat it as noun (i.e. an object, a separate academic discipline), and those that focus on action and the processual nature of culture (hence culture as verb), and even – in association with pragmatist and performative theories of language and the more recent ‘Activist Turn’ in the social sciences – have come to regard culture as culture-in-the-making, constituted and sustained by action (activities, performances). Most important for the adverbial approach are the modalities of culture, manifested in a variety of life styles. The study of culture as adverb (‘how’) can be pursued independently of the trench wars of cultural determinists and functionalists. Responding directly to Culture as Verb, qualifi ed as, chiefl y, an epistemological study, the article calls for a closer examination of the ontological implications of Nycz’s project of reinventing the humanities.