1. artifice - Noun
2. artifice - Verb
A handicraft; a trade; art of making.
Workmanship; a skillfully contrived work.
Artful or skillful contrivance.
Crafty device; an artful, ingenious, or elaborate trick. [Now the usual meaning.]
Source: Webster's dictionaryArchilochus and Alcaeus were aristocratic Greeks whose poetry had a social and religious function that was immediately intelligible to their audiences but which became a mere artifice or literary motif when transposed to Rome. Source: Internet
Cage received lauds for his performance, with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune writing "Herzog has found his ideal interpreter, a performer whose truth lies deep in the artifice of performance: ladies and gentlemen, Nicolas Cage, at his finest." Source: Internet
As Lorentz later noted (1921, 1928), he considered the time indicated by clocks resting in the aether as "true" time, while local time was seen by him as a heuristic working hypothesis and a mathematical artifice. Source: Internet
Although there are paw marks of a debutante whose skills still require some honing in this collection—especially in the craft itself—there is no doubt that the poetic quality compensates for the sometimes-overemphasized artifice. Source: Internet
Instead of joy, you got stiff service, the whiff of closely managed artifice and a very big bill. Source: Internet
John Dryden offered a more common assessment in the Essay of Dramatic Poesie, in which his Avatar Neander compares Shakespeare to Homer and Jonson to Virgil : the former represented profound creativity, the latter polished artifice. Source: Internet