art
from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
art
n 1: the products of human creativity; works of art
collectively; "an art exhibition"; "a fine collection of
art" [syn: {art}, {fine art}]
2: the creation of beautiful or significant things; "art does
not need to be innovative to be good"; "I was never any good
at art"; "he said that architecture is the art of wasting
space beautifully" [syn: {art}, {artistic creation},
{artistic production}]
3: a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and
observation; "the art of conversation"; "it's quite an art"
[syn: {art}, {artistry}, {prowess}]
4: photographs or other visual representations in a printed
publication; "the publisher was responsible for all the
artwork in the book" [syn: {artwork}, {art}, {graphics},
{nontextual matter}]
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
-ard \-ard\, -art \-art\
The termination of many English words; as, coward, reynard,
drunkard, mostly from the French, in which language this
ending is of German origin, being orig. the same word as
English hard. It usually has the sense of one who has to a
high or excessive degree the quality expressed by the root;
as, braggart, sluggard.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Art \Art\ ([aum]rt).
The second person singular, indicative mode, present tense,
of the substantive verb {Be}; but formed after the analogy of
the plural are, with the ending -t, as in thou shalt, wilt,
orig. an ending of the second person sing. pret. Cf. {Be}.
Now used only in solemn or poetical style.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Art \Art\ ([aum]rt), n. [F. art, L. ars, artis, orig., skill in
joining or fitting; prob. akin to E. arm, aristocrat,
article.]
1. The employment of means to accomplish some desired end;
the adaptation of things in the natural world to the uses
of life; the application of knowledge or power to
practical purposes.
[1913 Webster]
Blest with each grace of nature and of art. --Pope.
[1913 Webster]
2. A system of rules serving to facilitate the performance of
certain actions; a system of principles and rules for
attaining a desired end; method of doing well some special
work; -- often contradistinguished from science or
speculative principles; as, the art of building or
engraving; the art of war; the art of navigation.
[1913 Webster]
Science is systematized knowledge . . . Art is
knowledge made efficient by skill. --J. F.
Genung.
[1913 Webster]
3. The systematic application of knowledge or skill in
effecting a desired result. Also, an occupation or
business requiring such knowledge or skill.
[1913 Webster]
The fishermen can't employ their art with so much
success in so troubled a sea. --Addison.
[1913 Webster]
4. The application of skill to the production of the
beautiful by imitation or design, or an occupation in
which skill is so employed, as in painting and sculpture;
one of the fine arts; as, he prefers art to literature.
[1913 Webster]
5. pl. Those branches of learning which are taught in the
academical course of colleges; as, master of arts.
[1913 Webster]
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts.
--Pope.
[1913 Webster]
Four years spent in the arts (as they are called in
colleges) is, perhaps, laying too laborious a
foundation. --Goldsmith.
[1913 Webster]
6. Learning; study; applied knowledge, science, or letters.
[Archaic]
[1913 Webster]
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. --Pope.
[1913 Webster]
7. Skill, dexterity, or the power of performing certain
actions, acquired by experience, study, or observation;
knack; as, a man has the art of managing his business to
advantage.
[1913 Webster]
8. Skillful plan; device.
[1913 Webster]
They employed every art to soothe . . . the
discontented warriors. --Macaulay.
[1913 Webster]
9. Cunning; artifice; craft.
[1913 Webster]
Madam, I swear I use no art at all. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
Animals practice art when opposed to their superiors
in strength. --Crabb.
[1913 Webster]
10. The black art; magic. [Obs.] --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
{Art and part} (Scots Law), share or concern by aiding and
abetting a criminal in the perpetration of a crime,
whether by advice or by assistance in the execution;
complicity.
[1913 Webster]
Note: The arts are divided into various classes.
{The useful arts},
{The mechanical arts}, or
{The industrial arts} are those in which the hands and body
are more concerned than the mind; as in making clothes and
utensils. These are called trades.
{The fine arts} are those which have primarily to do with
imagination and taste, and are applied to the production
of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music,
painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the
term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and
architecture.
{The liberal arts} (artes liberales, the higher arts, which,
among the Romans, only freemen were permitted to pursue)
were, in the Middle Ages, these seven branches of
learning, -- grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy. In modern times the
liberal arts include the sciences, philosophy, history,
etc., which compose the course of academical or collegiate
education. Hence, degrees in the arts; master and bachelor
of arts.
[1913 Webster]
In America, literature and the elegant arts must
grow up side by side with the coarser plants of
daily necessity. --Irving.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: Science; literature; aptitude; readiness; skill;
dexterity; adroitness; contrivance; profession;
business; trade; calling; cunning; artifice; duplicity.
See {Science}.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906)
ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related as
follows by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.
One day a wag -- what would the wretch be at? --
Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,
And said it was a god's name! Straight arose
Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,
And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,
And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)
To serve his temple and maintain the fires,
Expound the law, manipulate the wires.
Amazed, the populace that rites attend,
Believe whate'er they cannot comprehend,
And, inly edified to learn that two
Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)
Have sweeter values and a grace more fit
Than Nature's hairs that never have been split,
Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,
And sell their garments to support the priests.
from
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
ART. The power of doing. something not taught by nature or instinct.
Johnson. Eunomus defines art to be a collection of certain rules for doing
anything in a set form. Dial. 2, p. 74. The Dictionaire des Sciences
Medicales, q.v., defines it in nearly the same terms.
2. The arts are divided into mechanical and liberal arts. The
mechanical arts are those which require more bodily than mental labor; they
are usually called trades, and those who pursue them are called artisans or
mechanics. The liberal are those which have for the sole or principal
object, works of the mind, and those who are engaged in them are called
artists. Pard. Dr. Com. n. 35.
3. The act of Congress of July 4, 1836, s. 6, in describing the
subjects of patents, uses the term art. The sense of this word in its usual
acceptation is perhaps too comprehensive. The thing to be patented is not a
mere elementary, principle, or intellectual discovery, but a principle put
in practice, and applied to some art, machine, manufacture, or composition
of matter. 4 Mason, 1.
4. Copper-plate printing on the back of a bank note, is an art for
which a patent may be granted. 4 Wash. C. C. R. 9.
from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
313 Moby Thesaurus words for "art":
American, Art Nouveau, Ashcan school, Barbizon, Bauhaus, Bolognese,
British, Cobra, Dadaism, Dutch, Fauvism, Flemish, Fontainebleau,
French, Gothicism, Italian, Italian hand, Mannerist, Milanese,
Modenese, Momentum, Neapolitan, New York, Paduan, Parisian, Phases,
Pre-Raphaelite, Raphaelite, Reflex, Restany, Roman, Scottish,
Sienese, Spur, Suprematism, The Ten, Tuscan, Umbrian, Venetian,
Washington, abstract expressionism, abstractionism,
academic discipline, academic specialty, action painting,
acuteness, address, adroitness, alphabet, applied science, area,
arena, art nouveau, art schools, artful dodge, artfulness,
artifice, artistic skill, artistry, arty-craftiness, astuteness,
baroque, blind, blueprint, business, cageyness, callidity, calling,
canniness, capability, career, career building, careerism,
charactering, characterization, chart, chicanery, choreography,
classicalism, classicism, cleverness, cloisonnism, competence,
conceptual art, concern, conspiracy, constructivism, contrivance,
conventional representation, conventionalism, coup, craft,
craftiness, cubism, cunning, cunningness, cute trick,
dance notation, deceit, delineation, demonstration,
department of knowledge, depiction, depictment, design, device,
dexterity, diagram, discipline, dodge, domain, drama, drawing,
earth art, eclectic, elementarism, exemplification, existentialism,
expedient, expertise, expressionism, fakement, feel, feint, fetch,
field, field of inquiry, field of study, figuration,
fine Italian hand, finesse, flair, foxiness, free abstraction,
futurism, gambit, game, gamesmanship, gimmick, grift, groups,
guile, hallucinatory painting, handicraft, handiness, hang,
hieroglyphic, iconography, idealism, ideogram, illustration,
imagery, imaging, impressionism, ingeniousness, insidiousness,
intimism, intrigue, intuitionism, inventiveness, jugglery,
kinetic art, knack, knavery, know-how, letter, lifework, limning,
line, line of business, line of work, linear chromatism,
little game, logogram, logograph, maneuver, map, matter painting,
mechanics, mechanism, method, metier, minimal art, mission,
modernism, move, musical notation, mystery, mysticism,
natural science, naturalism, neoclassicism, neoconcrete art,
neoconstructivism, nonobjectivism, notation, nuagism, number,
occupation, ology, one-upmanship, op art, photomontage, pictogram,
picturization, plan, plein-air, plot, ploy, poetic realism,
poetic tachism, pointillism, portraiture, portrayal,
postexpressionism, practice, prefigurement, preimpressionism,
presentment, primitivism, printing, profession, proficiency,
projection, province, pure science, purism, pursuit,
quietistic painting, racket, readiness, realism, realization,
red herring, rendering, rendition, representation,
representationalism, representationism, resourcefulness,
romanticism, ruse, satanic cunning, savvy, schema, scheme, science,
score, script, sharpness, shift, shiftiness, shrewdness, skill,
sleight, slipperiness, slyness, sneakiness, social science,
sophistry, specialization, specialty, sphere, stealth,
stealthiness, stratagem, strategy, study, subterfuge, subtilty,
subtleness, subtlety, suppleness, suprematism, surrealism,
syllabary, symbol, symbolism, synchromism, synthesism, tablature,
tachism, tactic, talent, technic, technical know-how,
technical knowledge, technical skill, technicology, technics,
technique, technology, touch, trade, traditionalism, trick,
trickery, trickiness, unism, virtu, vocation, vorticism, walk,
walk of life, wariness, way, wile, wiles, wiliness, wily device,
wit, work, writing
[email protected]