Etimology
From Middle English art, from Old French art, from Latin artem, accusative of ars (“art”). Partly displaced native Old English cræft, whence Modern English craft.
noun
art (countable and uncountable, plural arts)
(uncountable) The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the senses and emotions, usually specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
(uncountable) The creative and emotional expression of mental imagery, such as visual, auditory, social, etc.
(countable) Skillful creative activity, usually with an aesthetic focus.
(uncountable) The study and the product of these processes.
(uncountable) Aesthetic value.
(uncountable) Artwork.
(countable) A field or category of art, such as painting, sculpture, music, ballet, or literature.
(countable) A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
(countable) Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation.
(uncountable, dated) Contrivance, scheming, manipulation.
Examples
There is a debate as to whether graffiti is art or vandalism.
B.W. Wooster: If you ask me, art is responsible for most of the trouble in the world.R. Jeeves: An interesting theory, sir. Would you care to expatiate upon it?B.W. Wooster: As a matter of fact, no, Jeeves. The thought just occurred to me, as thoughts do.R. Jeeves: Very good, sir.
"I tell her what Donald Hall says: that the problem with workshops is that they trivialize art by minimizing the terror."
Visual art is a subjective understanding or perception of the viewer as well as a deliberate/conscious arrangement or creation of elements like colours, forms, movements, sounds, objects or other elements that produce a graphic or plastic whole that expresses thoughts, ideas or visions of the artist.
She's mastered the art of programming.
He's at university to study art.
Her photographs are nice, but there's no art in them.
Sotheby's regularly auctions art for millions.
art collection
I'm a great supporter of the arts.
Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product , is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.
A physician was immediately sent for; but on the first moment of beholding the corpse, he declared that Elvira's recovery was beyond the power of art.
The relation of science to art may be summed up in a brief expression: From Science comes Prevision: from Prevision comes Action.
The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.
it was not art,Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke—When ’mid soft looks of pity, there would dartA glance as keen as is the lightning’s strokeWhen it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.
[...] and Mrs. Earnshaw undertook to keep her sister-in-law in due restraint, when she returned home employing art, not force—with force she would have found it impossible.
Related words
synonyms
(Human effort): craft
antonyms
(antonym(s) of "Human effort"): mundacity, nature, subsistence
hyponyms
ABC art
abstract art
ASCII art
black art
black arts
blotter art
body art
cave art
clip art
concept art
fine arts
folk art
graphic art
high art
installation art
junk art
kinetic art
liberal arts
line art
martial art
minimal art
mobiliary art
modern art
naïve art
net art
op art
optical art
outsider art
performance art
pixel art
plastic art
pop art
portable art
primitive art
prior art
process art
retinal art
sand art
sequential art
seventh art
street art
traditional art
vernacular art
visual art
Etimology
From Middle English art, from Old English eart (“(thou) art”), second-person singular present indicative of wesan, from Proto-Germanic *art (“(thou) art", originally, "(thou) becamest”), second-person singular preterite indicative form of *iraną (“to rise, be quick, become active”), from Proto-Indo-European *er-, *or(w)- (“to lift, rise, set in motion”). Cognate with Faroese ert (“art”), Icelandic ert (“art”), Old English earon (“are”), from the same preterite-present Germanic verb. More at are.
verb
art
(archaic) second-person singular simple present indicative of be
Examples
How great thou art!