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Artist vs Artifact - What's the difference?

artist | artifact |

As nouns the difference between artist and artifact

is that artist is one who performs extraordinary physical tricks, such as on a trapeze while artifact is an object made or shaped by human hand.

artist

English

Noun

  • A person who creates art.
  • A person who creates art as an occupation.
  • A person who is skilled at some activity.

    • Derived terms

    * artistdom * artistic * artistically * artistry * con artist * escape artist * pickup artist * piss-artist * quick-change artist

    See also

    * animator * artisan * drawer * sculptor

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (archaic) Artistic.
  • *, vol.1, ch.24:
    • Nature, to shew that nothing is savage in whatsoever she produceth, causeth oftentimes, even in rudest and most unarted nations, productions of spirits to arise, that confront and wrestle with the most artist productions.

    Anagrams

    * * * English words suffixed with -ist ----

    artifact

    English

    Alternative forms

    * artefact

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An object made or shaped by human hand.
  • (archaeology) An object, such as a tool, weapon or ornament, of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
    • The dig produced many Roman artifacts .
  • Something viewed as a product of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element.
  • * "The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy" (Philip Weiss).
  • A structure or finding 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.
    • The spot on his lung turned out to be an artifact of the X-ray process.
  • An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
  • (computing) A perceptible distortion that appears in a digital image, audio or video file as a result of applying a lossy compression algorithm.
    • This JPEG image has been so highly compressed that it has too many unsightly compression artifacts , making it unsuitable for the cover of our magazine.

    References

    * * "artefact" is the preferred spelling in Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary'', with ''artifact listed as a variant. * "artifact" is preferred by the Oxford English Dictionary and most American dictionaries.