Definition of "artifact" in English

noun

1. An object made or shaped by human hand or labor.

2. An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.

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

4. A finding or structure 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. (archaeology) An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.

   • The dig produced many Roman artifacts.

6. (biology) An appearance or structure in protoplasm due to death, the method of preparation of specimens, or the use of reagents, and not present during life.

7. (computing, radiology) A perceptible distortion that appears in an audio or video file or an image as a result of applying a lossy compression or other inexact processing algorithm or of physical interference in an acquisition process.

   • This JPEG image has been so highly compressed that it has unsightly artifacts, making it unsuitable for the cover of our magazine.
   • The opacity in his chest radiograph turned out to be an artifact due to the film.

8. (software engineering) Ellipsis of build artifact.

9. (museology) Any object in the collection of a museum. May be used sensu stricto only for human-made objects, or may include ones that are not human-made.