artfully.

1. With skillful craft or effective arrangement.

2. With calculated cunning, manipulation or concealment.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• artfully arrange
• artfully construct

On the page

The scene was artfully arranged so that the small discrepancy appeared only on a second reading.

The argument was artfully constructed around a distinction the reader could clearly test.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated general. Forms: Invariable adverb; use more or most only where natural. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: style analysis, interpretation, characterization, rhetorical contrast. Disciplines: literary analysis, prose writing, advanced general English. Commonness: moderately common.