Artifice
(Ar"ti*fice) n. [L. artificium, fr. artifex artificer; ars, artis, art + facere to make: cf. F. artifice.]
1. A handicraft; a trade; art of making. [Obs.]
2. Workmanship; a skillfully contrived work.
The material universe.. in the artifice of God, the artifice of the best Mechanist.
Cudworth.
3. Artful or skillful contrivance.
His [Congreve's] plots were constructed without much artifice.
Craik.
4. Crafty device; an artful, ingenious, or elaborate trick. [Now the usual meaning.]
Those who were conscious of guilt employed numerous artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry.
Macaulay.
Artificer
(Ar*tif"i*cer) n. [Cf. F. artificier, fr. LL. artificiarius.]
1. An artistic worker; a mechanic or manufacturer; one whose occupation requires skill or knowledge of a
particular kind, as a silversmith.
2. One who makes or contrives; a deviser, inventor, or framer. "Artificer of fraud." Milton.
The great Artificer of all that moves.
Cowper.
3. A cunning or artful fellow. [Obs.] B. Jonson.
4. (Mil.) A military mechanic, as a blacksmith, carpenter, etc.; also, one who prepares the shells, fuses,
grenades, etc., in a military laboratory.
Syn. — Artisan; artist. See Artisan.
Artificial
(Ar`ti*fi"cial) a. [L. artificialis, fr. artificium: cf. F. artificiel. See Artifice.]
1. Made or contrived by art; produced or modified by human skill and labor, in opposition to natural; as,
artificial heat or light, gems, salts, minerals, fountains, flowers.
Artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
Shak.
2. Feigned; fictitious; assumed; affected; not genuine. "Artificial tears." Shak.
3. Artful; cunning; crafty. [Obs.] Shak.
4. Cultivated; not indigenous; not of spontaneous growth; as, artificial grasses. Gibbon.
Artificial arguments (Rhet.), arguments invented by the speaker, in distinction from laws, authorities,
and the like, which are called inartificial arguments or proofs. Johnson. — Artificial classification
(Science), an arrangement based on superficial characters, and not expressing the true natural relations
species; as, "the artificial system" in botany, which is the same as the Linnæan system. — Artificial horizon.
See under Horizon. Artificial light, any light other than that which proceeds from the heavenly bodies.
— Artificial lines, lines on a sector or scale, so contrived as to represent the logarithmic sines and
tangents, which, by the help of the line of numbers, solve, with tolerable exactness, questions in trigonometry,
navigation, etc. — Artificial numbers, logarithms. — Artificial person (Law). See under Person.
— Artificial sines, tangents, etc., the same as logarithms of the natural sines, tangents, etc. Hutton.
Artificiality
(Ar`ti*fi`ci*al"i*ty) n. The quality or appearance of being artificial; that which is artificial.
