(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
a deceptive maneuver (a trick to help pretend)- found artifice where I hoped for sincerity
- political artifice
- ...a still bolder acknowledgment of artifice and make-believe: the rooster's crow, the train and factory whistles and school bells frankly man-made and in the spirit of "play."Thornton Wilder -- Our Town
- Exposure by mechanical artifice (automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses), not yet.James Joyce -- Ulysses
- But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and inhumane blast of the world's contempt.Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure
- It's no secret, actually, all my friends know it and they forgive the artifice.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum
- But I suppose that's the way with such women: They wouldn't be minxes if they weren't masters of artifice and fraud.Gail Carson Levine -- Ella Enchanted
- It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice.Gaston Leroux -- The Phantom of the Opera
- Within it they lament for the artifice whereby the dead Deidamia still mourns for Achilles, and there for the Palladium they bear the penalty.Dante Alighieri -- Dante's Inferno
- They exceed the usual unjustified license of party artifice.Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers — Modern English Edition 2
- One day I noticed there was no more skin to absently peel, just air where there'd been artifice.Christina Garcia -- Dreaming in Cuban
- He knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had altered the unplanned beauty of the graded steps.Ayn Rand -- The Fountainhead
- Her mother's face lost all its stiff artifice and her voice was surprisingly soft.Nicholas Sparks -- The Best of Me
- Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her.Charles Dickens -- Little Dorrit
- It would be false, and there was no room for artifice.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity
- As long as no one succumbed to its artifice and unsickled it with a cigar.Arundhati Roy -- The God of Small Things
- My eyes burn, and it's not artifice, unlike the wincing.Veronica Roth -- Divergent
- Frederick's expression is entirely without artifice.Anthony Doerr -- All the Light We Cannot See
- One artifice succeeded with her to admiration.Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
- The consequence is, that his national pride resorts to a thousand artifices, and to all the petty tricks of individual vanity.Alexis de Toqueville -- Democracy In America, Volume 1
artifice = a deceptive maneuver (a trick to help pretend)