artificial
Direct German Translations & Equivalents:
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Definitions & Usage
Man-made; made by humans; of artifice.
Insincere; fake, forced, or feigned.
Not natural or normal: imposed arbitrarily or without regard to the specifics or normal circumstances of a person, a situation, etc.
(taxonomy) Based on characteristics useful for identification, without regard for the formal differences used in classification.
(bridge) Conveying some meaning other than the actual contents of one's hand.
Notable Literary & Historical Quotes
“An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time.”
— 2013 June 1, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 5 (Technology Quarterly):
““How quickly have I fallen!” thought Tarzan; but in his heart he did not consider it a fall—rather, he pitied the poor creatures of Paris, penned up like prisoners in their silly clothes, and watched by policemen all their poor lives, that they might do nothing that was not entirely artificial and tiresome.”
— 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 131:
“This results in an artificial conflation of the individual crises experienced by Western European states and leads to imprecise judgements on the impact of Marshall. This confusing conflation is not simply the product of retrospection.”
— 1990 February 19, Peter Burnham, The Political Economy of Postwar Reconstruction, Springer, →ISBN, page 73: