Table of Contents
The word for today is…
artifice (noun) – 1. (a) Deception or trickery.
(b) Something contrived or made up to achieve an end, especially by deceiving.
2. (a) Cleverness or ingenuity in making or doing something.
(b) An artistic device or convention.
Source : The Free Dictionary
Etymology : Do great actors display artifice or art? Sometimes a bit of both. Artifice stresses creative skill or intelligence, but it also implies a sense of falseness and trickery. Art generally rises above such falseness, suggesting instead an unanalyzable creative force. Actors may rely on some of each, but the personae they display in their roles are usually artificial creations. Therein lies a lexical connection between art and artifice. Artifice derives from artificium, Latin for “artifice.” That root also gave English artificial. Artificium , in turn, developed from ars, the Latin root underlying the word art (and related terms such as artist and artisan).
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