ARTIFI'CIAL, adjective

1. Made or contrived by art, or by human skill and labor, in opposition to natural; as artificial heat or light; an artificial magnet.

2. Feigned, fictitious; not genuine or natural; as artificial tears.

3. Contrived with skill or art.

4. Cultivated; not indigenous; not being of spontaneous growth; as artificial grasses.

Artificial arguments, in rhetoric, are arguments invented by the speaker, in distinction from laws, authorities and the like, which are called inartificial arguments of proofs.

Artificial lines, on a sector or scale, are lines so contrived as to represent the logarithmic sines and tangents, which, by the help of the line of numbers, solve, with tolerable exactness, questions in trigonometry, navigation, etc.

Artificial numbers, the same with logarithms.