artificial

comparative more artificial · superlative most artificial

1. Man-made; made by humans; of artifice.

   The flowers were artificial, and he thought them rather tacky.

   1 more example

   An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time.

   2013 June 1, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 5 (Technology Quarterly)

2. Insincere; fake, forced, or feigned.

   Her manner was somewhat artificial.

3. Not natural or normal: imposed arbitrarily or without regard to the specifics or normal circumstances of a person, a situation, etc.

   In Alberta, for example, policy documents reinforce an artificial distinction between leadership-related activity and management.

   2016 November 10, Gabriele Lakomski, Scott Eacott, Colin W. Evers, Questioning Leadership: New directions for educational organisations, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 156

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   “How quickly have I fallen!” thought Tarzan; but in his heart he did not consider it a fall—rather, he pitied the poor creatures of Paris, penned up like prisoners in their silly clothes, and watched by policemen all their poor lives, that they might do nothing that was not entirely artificial and tiresome.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 131

   This results in an artificial conflation of the individual crises experienced by Western European states and leads to imprecise judgements on the impact of Marshall. This confusing conflation is not simply the product of retrospection.

   1990 February 19, Peter Burnham, The Political Economy of Postwar Reconstruction, Springer, →ISBN, page 73

   [If] the economic literature of the eighteenth century is examined in terms other than the narrow categories of free trade and protection, the artificial division between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries would break down .

   2002 May 9, Maxine Berg, Pat Hudson, Michael Sonenscher, Manufacture in Town and Country Before the Factory, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 35

   The method of suppression is generally either an artificial conflation of public and private, in which the public is represented as private, or an artificial separation of public from private, which distracts attention from the public[…]

   2017 July 12, A. Javier Trevino, The Sociology of Law: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, Routledge, →ISBN

4. biologyBased on characteristics useful for identification, without regard for the formal differences used in classification.

   Artificial keys are devised purely to facilitate determination […]

   1966 October, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume I, New York, N.Y.; London: Columbia University Press, →OCLC, page 3

5. bridgeConveying some meaning other than the actual contents of one's hand.

   An artificial bid doesn't necessarily show length in the suit being bid, it has an altogether different meaning.

   1999, Edwin B. Kantar, Eddie Kantar Teaches Advanced Bridge Defense, page 191

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   North makes an artificial call of 3♧, the cheapest suit at the 3 level, to show a very poor hand. What North holds in clubs doesn't matter at all.

   2008, David Galt, Teach Yourself Visually Bridge, page 219

   Synonyms: conventional · Antonyms: natural