English

Alternative forms

• artefact

Noun

artifact ‎(plural artifacts)

1. An object made or shaped by human hand.
2. (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.

3. Something viewed as a product of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element.
   • Philip Weiss

     The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy.

4. 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.

5. (biology) A structure or appearance in protoplasm due to death, method of preparation of specimens, or the use of reagents, and not present during life.
6. An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
7. (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.

Translations

References

• artifact in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• "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.
• “artifact” (US) / “artefact” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.