# artifact

Pronunciation: US say "AR-ti-fakt" /ˈɑɹtɪfækt/; UK say "AH-ti-fakt" /ˈɑːtɪfækt/

## Noun

1. An object of archaeological or historical interest, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon, especially one found during an excavation.
   - Simple: A tool, decoration, weapon, or other object from the past that matters to history, often dug up from the ground.
   - _The excavation turned up hundreds of Bronze Age artifacts, including pins, beads, and broken pottery._
   - _Each artifact recovered from the shipwreck was photographed and tagged before it left the site._
2. Any object held in a museum's collection; in the strict use only human-made objects, in a broader use natural ones as well.
   - Simple: Any object kept in a museum's collection, sometimes only things people made, sometimes natural things too.
   - _The museum catalogs every artifact in its collection, from quilts to meteorites, with a number and a photograph._
   - _Curators moved several fragile artifacts into climate-controlled storage before the renovation._
3. Any object made or shaped by people, or more broadly by any intelligent agent, rather than occurring naturally.
   - Simple: Anything that people (or sometimes animals) have made or shaped, not found in nature.
   - _The students compared natural objects such as shells and pinecones with artifacts such as buttons and cups._
   - _A plastic bottle on the beach is an artifact, while the driftwood beside it is not._
4. A visible or audible distortion in an image, audio, or video file caused by lossy compression, another inexact processing algorithm, or physical interference while the data was captured.
   - Simple: A flaw in a picture, video, or sound file caused by shrinking the file, processing it, or interference during recording.
   - _Saving the photo at the lowest quality left blocky artifacts across the clear blue sky._
   - _Turn the volume up and you can hear a faint digital artifact behind the singer's voice._
5. Something regarded as the product of human action or ideas rather than as an inherent part of the thing in question.
   - Simple: Something that exists because people made it happen or thought it up, not because it was always there.
   - _The five-day workweek is an artifact of labor laws and union bargaining, not a law of nature._
   - _Many of the straight borders on the map are artifacts of treaties drawn up far away rather than natural divisions._
6. A result, feature, or structure seen in an experiment or specimen that is not really there but is caused by the method, equipment, or preparation.
   - Simple: Something that shows up in a test or sample only because of how it was done, not because it is real.
   - _The sudden jump in the temperature readings was an artifact of a loose sensor, not a real change in the reaction._
   - _Some of the survey's most striking results turned out to be artifacts of the way the questions were worded._
7. Short for build artifact: a file produced when a program's code is built, such as a package ready to install. — Ellipsis of build artifact.
   - Simple: Short for build artifact, a file made from a program's code so it can be used.
   - _The pipeline uploads each artifact to the package registry once the tests pass._
   - _If the build fails, no artifact is produced and the release is put on hold._

## Origin

Artifact is an altered spelling of artefact, which English took from Italian artefatto. The Italian word combines two Latin parts, arte ("by skill"), a form of ars ("art"), and factum ("thing made"), which comes from facio ("to make, do").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/artifact (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).