MEANING
1. A pattern or feature produced by measurement or processing rather than by the phenomenon being studied.
2. An object made or modified by people, often preserved as evidence of a past culture.
3. Something whose form or existence reflects the human setting in which it was produced.
Use it for
questioning whether a result comes from the measurement procedure; distinguishing a real pattern from a processing effect; identifying an apparent relationship created by the study designDistinguishes a method-created pattern from the phenomenon under study while preserving historical and cultural senses. Academic functions: Evidence, Research / Methodology, Theory / Conceptual Language.
Words that belong together
- a measurement artifact
- a statistical artifact
- an artifact of the method
On the page
The apparent discontinuity may be an artifact of the coding rule rather than a change in behavior.
The authors repeat the analysis with a different measure to test whether the pattern is a measurement artifact.
The artifact establishes the presence of a manufacturing technique but not the identity of its maker.
Context helps distinguish a discarded artifact from an object deliberately placed at the site.
The essay treats the category as a cultural artifact whose boundaries changed across periods.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- artifact
Usage notes
Countable: artifact, artifacts. British artefact is a spelling variant, not a separate headword. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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