artistic

1. 1
   adjective

   Having or showing creative skill, especially in creating art or design.

   Critics admired the director's artistic vision throughout the film.

   He proved remarkably artistic, sketching detailed portraits from memory.

   Similarcreative, imaginative, talented, gifted, inventive

   Oppositeinartistic, uncreative, unimaginative, untalented

   Note

   The word came from French artistique, built from artiste and -ique, though English speakers hear it simply as artist plus -ic. In this sense it names a personal gift rather than a field. Walt Whitman, writing of Lincoln in 1865, sets "artistic" beside "moral" as a quality of personality itself. It compares with more and most (more artistic, most artistic), never with -er or -est.

2. 2
   adjective

   Relating to art, or showing the qualities typical of artists.

   The festival celebrates the region's rich artistic heritage.

   Her work blends scientific precision with genuine artistic sensibility.

   Similaraesthetic, creative, cultural

3. 3
   adjective

   Pleasing to the eye through beauty of form, color, or arrangement.

   The plated dessert was as artistic as it was delicious.

   Photographers found the old courtyard wonderfully artistic at sunset.

   Similarbeautiful, attractive, elegant, tasteful, picturesque

   Oppositeugly, unattractive, unsightly, tasteless

   Note

   Here the praise moves from the maker to the thing made: a plated dessert, a courtyard, a passage of music. Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Psychology (1855) ties it to what will "excite the feeling of beauty" and finds that beauty in gradation, in notes that are not all forte or all piano. Unlike the creative-skill meaning, it needs no artist in view. It judges only the result.

4. 4
   adjectiveslangoffensive

   An offensive online stand-in for autistic, spelled with one letter changed so the insult looks harmless and used to mock people.

   Note

   This is a disguise, not a kindness. Online, changing one letter of autistic produces a harmless-looking word, and people use it to mock, often beside jokes like "severely regarded" or "restarted." It carries the insulting senses of autistic (inept, stupid, uncool) more than the clinical one, and it belongs with look-alikes such as acoustic. Many autistic people find it hurtful. In sincere writing, the respectful word is simply autistic.

5. 5
   adverbnonstandard

   In an artistic manner; in a style characteristic of art.

   They decorated the hall artistic for the celebration.

   She wrapped each gift artistic, with ribbons and folded paper.

   Similarartfully, creatively, beautifully, tastefully, stylishly

   Oppositeinartistic

   Note

   Here the adjective form does an adverb's job after a verb, as in "You've got to do it artistic," from Geoffrey Tolhurst's Flat 4 Kings Cross (1963). Such use is nonstandard. It sounds natural in a character's mouth but out of place in edited prose, where artistically is the expected form. It still compares as more artistic and most artistic, and its opposite is inartistic.

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