artifact

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- Proto-Indo-European *h₂értis Proto-Italic *artis Latin ars Latin arte Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁k- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁kyéti Proto-Italic *θakjō Proto-Italic *fakjō Latin faciō Latin factum Vulgar Latin *artefactum Italian artefattoder. English artifact Alteration of artefact, from Italian artefatto, from Latin arte (“by skill”) (ablative of ars (“art”)) + factum (“thing made”) (from facio (“to make, do”)).

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

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

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.

   “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.”

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.

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

5. An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.

   “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.””

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.

   “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.”

8. 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.