artifact

Definitions

From Latin arte factum, 'made with skill.' art (skill) + fact (the past participle of fac, 'made') = 'a thing skillfully made.' Anything humans made rather than nature.

Why It Means This

Core sense: a human-made object, the archaeologist's word for tools, pottery, ornaments. A second, modern sense flips the meaning into something unwanted — in imaging or data, an artifact is a false feature created by the process itself, not really 'there.'

Common Collocations

• 1.ancient artifact古代文物
• 2.cultural artifact文化制品
• 3.imaging artifact成像伪迹

Example Sentences

• 1.

  The museum displays artifacts recovered from a Bronze Age tomb.

• 2.

  The strange line in the scan was an artifact, not a tumor.

• 3.

  Compression can introduce visible artifacts into the image.