Meaning & use

artificial

adjective·Academic

Made by human effort or skill rather than occurring naturally.

See it in a sentence

The dessert's bright color came from an artificial food dye.

Artificial lighting completely replaced sunlight in the underground greenhouse facility.

A note on using this word

Artificial can describe both manufactured objects and insincere behavior, as in an artificial smile.

Words with a similar meaning

syntheticmanufacturedman-made

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “artificial”, then compare your use with the examples above.

Your draft stays on this page and is not sent anywhere.