Artifact Meaning
/ˈɑːtɪfækt/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounAn object made or shaped by human hand or labor.
nounAn object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
Sentence Examples
I heard they found an alien artifact on the moon.
The artifact discovered at the archaeological site should be treated with utmost care.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The museum displayed an ancient ____ from a Roman excavation site.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The scientist found a rare ____ that dated back thousands of years.
Word Origin & History
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”)).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Given increasing investment in an IT (information technology) artifact (i.e., online service website), it is becoming important to retain existing customers."
— 2010 May 26, Young Sik Kang, Heeseok Lee, “Understanding the role of an IT artifact in online service continuance: An extended perspective of user satisfaction.(Report)”, in Computers in Human Behavior, →DOI:
"The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy."
— 2004, Philip Weiss, American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps:
"Overall the signage at NIE has the appearance being a top-down artefact driven by institutional policy with English set as the default language."
— 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 6:
"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.”"
— 2017, Tim Carvell [et al.], “North Korea”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 4, episode 21, John Oliver (actor), Warner Bros. Television, via HBO:
"These hallucinations are compression artifacts, but—like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier—they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world."
— 2023 February 9, Ted Chiang, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”, in The New Yorker:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The museum displayed an ancient ____ from a Roman excavation site.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The scientist found a rare ____ that dated back thousands of years.