Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of 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 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.