artifact
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɑːtɪfækt/
ipa: /ˈɑɹtɪfækt/
ipa: [-ɾɪ-]
ipa: [-ɾə-]
Forms: form: artifacts
form: artefact
Etymology: Alteration of artefact, from Italian artefatto, from Latin arte (“by skill”) (ablative of ars (“art”)) + factum (“thing made”) (from facio (“to make, do”)).
Senses: examples: text: Given increasing investment in an IT (information technology) artifact (i.e., online service website), it is becoming important to retain existing customers.
ref: 2010 May 24, Young Sik Kang, Heeseok Lee, “Understanding the role of an IT artifact in online service continuance: An extended perspective of user satisfaction.(Report)”, in Computers in Human Behavior, →DOI:
glosses: An object made or shaped by human hand or labor.
glosses: An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
examples: text: The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy.
ref: 2004, Philip Weiss, American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps:
text: Overall the signage at NIE has the appearance being a top-down artefact driven by institutional policy with English set as the default language.
ref: 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 6:
glosses: Something viewed as a product of human agency or conception rather than an inherent element.
examples: text: The spot on his lung turned out to be an artifact of the X-ray process.
glosses: 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.
examples: text: The dig produced many Roman artifacts.
text: 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.”
ref: 2017, Tim Carvell [et al.], “North Korea”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 4, episode 21, John Oliver (actor), Warner Bros. Television, via HBO:
topics: archaeology
history
human-sciences
sciences
glosses: An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
glosses: 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.
examples: text: This JPEG image has been so highly compressed that it has unsightly artifacts, making it unsuitable for the cover of our magazine.
text: The opacity in his chest radiograph turned out to be an artifact due to the film.
text: These hallucinations are compression artifacts, but—like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier—they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world.
ref: 2023 February 9, Ted Chiang, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”, in The New Yorker:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
medicine
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
radiology
sciences
glosses: 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.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
software
glosses: Ellipsis of build artifact.
coordinate_terms: object
specimen
glosses: 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: word: artefact
word: artifact
Hypernyms: word: entity
word: object
word: item
Hyponyms: word: tool
word: instrument
word: device
word: clothing
word: shoe
word: toiletry
word: jewelry
word: weapon
word: artwork
word: invention
word: building
word: furniture
word: vehicle
word: stationery
Meronyms: word: material
Derived terms: artifacted
artifacting
artifactual
build artifact
cryoartifact
ecofact
geofact
microartifact