Artifact

/ˈɑːtɪfækt/ · noun

Meaning

An object made or shaped by human hand or labor..

Definitions by Sense

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. (archaeology) An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
6. (biology) 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. (computing, radiology) 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. (software engineering) Ellipsis of build artifact.

Example Sentences

Given increasing investment in an IT (information technology) artifact (i.e., online service website), it is becoming important to retain existing customers.

The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy.

Overall the signage at NIE has the appearance being a top-down artefact driven by institutional policy with English set as the default language.

The spot on his lung turned out to be an artifact of the X-ray process.

The dig produced many Roman artifacts.

Holy shit! It is fascinating when a country’s culture seeps even into their math lessons, although it’s not really surprising. As a British child, our math questions were “if Johnny has two artifacts and Dinesh has two artifacts, then how many artifacts is Johnny about to have?” The answer, of course, “all the artifacts, Dinesh’s family can come visit them in a British museum whenever they’re in town.”

This JPEG image has been so highly compressed that it has unsightly artifacts, making it unsuitable for the cover of our magazine.

The opacity in his chest radiograph turned out to be an artifact due to the film.

Synonyms for artifact

Antonyms for artifact

Related Words

Word Forms

• artifacts
• artefact

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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