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.
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Artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life. --Shak.
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2. Feigned; fictitious; assumed; affected; not genuine.
"Artificial tears." --Shak.
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3. Artful; cunning; crafty. [Obs.] --Shak.
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4. Cultivated; not indigenous; not of spontaneous growth; as,
artificial grasses. --Gibbon.
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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.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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
WordNet (r) 2.0
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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
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