artifice
Americannoun
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a clever trick or stratagem; a cunning, crafty device or expedient; wile.
- Synonyms:
- subterfuge
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trickery; guile; craftiness.
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cunning; ingenuity; inventiveness.
a drawing-room comedy crafted with artifice and elegance.
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a skillful or artful contrivance or expedient.
noun
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a clever expedient; ingenious stratagem
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crafty or subtle deception
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skill; cleverness
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a skilfully contrived device
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obsolete craftsmanship
Synonym Usage
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of artifice
1525–35; < Anglo-French < Latin artificium craftsmanship, art, craftiness, equivalent to arti-, combining form of ars art 1 + -fic-, combining form of facere to do 1, make + -ium + -ium
Explanation
If a politician pretends to be angry as a way of rousing the anger of the voters and getting more votes, he's guilty of artifice — a subtle and crafty trick. Before taking on its current meaning, artifice meant a skilled piece of workmanship. A beautiful diamond bracelet might have been considered a piece of artifice, for example; now it would only be called artifice if the diamonds were fake.
Vocabulary lists containing artifice
100 SAT Words Beginning with "A"
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The Federalist Papers, No. 1 by Alexander Hamilton
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Divergent
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But layer a catchy tune over all that artifice, and the music is the only thing many people will hear.
From Salon • Apr. 25, 2026
Sayers praised the art underlying the artifice, paraphrasing Aristotle on the practice of literary deception.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026
Anytime the film veers into computer-generated territory, it takes on a sheen of cheesy artifice.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 6, 2026
Underneath the digital artifice, Chaplin’s eyes flash with hot conviction and palpable presence.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 16, 2025
Haydn's aim was the manufacturing of beauty and elegance in the material world; he was conscious that what he was doing was artifice, not a divine intervention.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
