Artificial

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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.
        [1913 Webster]


  
              Artificial strife
              Lives in these touches, livelier than life. --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Feigned; fictitious; assumed; affected; not genuine.
        "Artificial tears." --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Artful; cunning; crafty. [Obs.] --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. Cultivated; not indigenous; not of spontaneous growth; as,
        artificial grasses. --Gibbon.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     {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 Linn[ae]an 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.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  artificial
       adj 1: contrived by art rather than nature; "artificial flowers";
              "artificial flavoring"; "an artificial diamond";
              "artificial fibers"; "artificial sweeteners" [syn: {unreal}]
              [ant: {natural}]
       2: artificially formal; "that artificial humility that her
          husband hated"; "contrived coyness"; "a stilted letter of
          acknowledgment"; "when people try to correct their speech
          they develop a stilted pronunciation" [syn: {contrived}, {hokey},
           {stilted}]
       3: not arising from natural growth or characterized by vital
          processes

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  104 Moby Thesaurus words for "artificial":
     Gongoresque, Gongoristic, Marinistic, affected, apocryphal,
     assumed, bastard, bogus, brummagem, colorable, colored, concocted,
     contrived, counterfeit, counterfeited, cute, distorted, dressed up,
     dummy, elaborate, elaborated, embellished, embroidered, ersatz,
     euphuistic, fabricated, factitious, fake, faked, false, falsified,
     fashioned, feigned, fictitious, fictive, forced, garbled,
     goody-goody, high-sounding, histrionic, hollow, hyperelegant,
     illegitimate, imitation, insincere, junky, la-di-da, labored, made,
     made-up, make-believe, man-made, maniere, mannered, manufactured,
     meretricious, mincing, mock, overacted, overdone, overelaborate,
     overelegant, overnice, overrefined, painted, papier-mache,
     perverted, phony, pinchbeck, plastic, precieuse, precieux,
     precious, pretend, pretended, pretentious, pseudo, put-on, quaint,
     quasi, queer, self-styled, sham, shoddy, simpering, simulated,
     so-called, soi-disant, spurious, stagy, studied, substitute,
     supposititious, synthetic, theatrical, tin, tinsel, titivated,
     twisted, unauthentic, ungenuine, unnatural, unreal, warped
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  ARTIFICIAL. What is the result of, or relates to, the arts; opposed to
  natural; thus we say a corporation is an artificial person, in opposition to
  a natural person. Artificial accession is the uniting one property to
  another by art, opposed to a simple natural union. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 503.