artifact

Meaning

1. An object made or shaped by human hand or labor.
2. An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
3. Something viewed as a product of human agency or conception rather than an inherent element.
4. A finding or structure in an experiment or investigation that is not a true feature of the object under observation, but is a result of external action, the test arrangement, or an experimental error.
5. An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
6. An appearance or structure in protoplasm due to death, the method of preparation of specimens, or the use of reagents, and not present during life.
7. A perceptible distortion that appears in an audio or video file or an image as a result of applying a lossy compression or other inexact processing algorithm or of physical interference in an acquisition process.
8. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis) Ellipsis of build artifact.
9. Any object in the collection of a museum. May be used sensu stricto only for human-made objects, or may include ones that are not human-made.

Synonyms

artefact

relic

antique

artefact

curio

thing

ancient

matter

object

product

production

manufactured article

item

antiqueness

antiquity

article

commodity

heirloom

Translations

Artefakt

artefact

artefacto

artéfact

artefact

Werkzeug

utensilio

Produkt

yapı

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈɑːtɪfækt/

Etymology

Alteration of artefact, from Italian artefatto, from Latin arte (“by skill”) (ablative of ars (“art”)) + factum (“thing made”) (from facio (“to make, do”)).