… revising the state's constitution through a series of legal stratagems and artifices …—W. Haywood Burns
b
: false or insincere behavior
social artifice
Did you know?
The Difference Between Art and Artifice
Do great actors display artifice or art? Sometimes a bit of both. Artifice stresses creative skill or intelligence, but it also implies a sense of falseness and trickery. Art generally rises above such falseness, suggesting instead an unanalyzable creative force. Actors may rely on some of each, but the personae they display in their roles are usually artificial creations. Therein lies a lexical connection between art and artifice. Artifice comes from artificium, Latin for "artistry, craftmanship, craft, craftiness, and cunning." (That root also gave us the English word artificial.) Artificium, in turn, developed from ars, the Latin root underlying the word art (and related terms such as artist and artisan).
He spoke without artifice or pretense.
The whole story was just an artifice to win our sympathy.
Recent Examples on the WebSavvy viewers might have figured out that not all of the giggles and guffaws were real, but few people outside the industry understood the extent of the artifice.—Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2024 Does the exposing of the genre’s mechanics and artifice make Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show one of the genre’s most transparent and therefore honest entries?—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Mar. 2024 The confessional anguish that went into the movie—the intimate price of pursuing a solo dream as a couple—is already masked in abstraction, in characters whose definition is kept vague, in a tale that’s most notable for its artifice.—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 18 Jan. 2024 However, this artifice soon becomes the movie’s point.—Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 20 Mar. 2024 One of the more obvious examples of partisan artifice was in the northwest corner of the state, in the 73rd Assembly District, where the GOP had strategically added Republican areas and subtracted Democratic ones in a plan enacted in 2022.—Megan O’Matz, ProPublica, 16 Feb. 2024 The central mystery of Kate’s disappearance aside, this has been the most fascinating thing about the entire debacle: watching the picture-perfect artifice constructed by the Royal Family crumble to the ground.—Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 14 Mar. 2024 Vaughn wants audiences to suspect the artifice and get a laugh out of the clunky clichés being served up and subverted, while innocuously planting seeds that will pay off later in the movie.—Peter Debruge, Variety, 31 Jan. 2024 Blurring the line between reality and artifice Gomez grew up in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to study at theCalifornia Institute of the Arts.—Victoria Woodcock, CNN, 26 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'artifice.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from Anglo-French & Middle French, "trade, craft, craftsmanship, contrivance," borrowed from Latin artificium "artistry, craftsmanship, craft, craftiness, cunning," from artific-, artifex "practitioner of an art, specialist, craftsman, creator" (from art-, ars "acquired skill, craftsmanship" + -fic-, -fex, agentive derivative of facere "to make, bring about, do") + -ium, denominal or deverbal suffix of function or state — more at art entry 1, fact
Share