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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

art.

The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the senses and emotions, usually specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɑːt/Received-Pronunciation/ɑɹt/General-American[ɑːʔ]Estuary-English[äˑɹt]Ireland
  1. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the senses and emotions, usually specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

    uncountable
    There is a debate as to whether graffiti is art or vandalism.
  2. The creative and emotional expression of mental imagery, such as visual, auditory, social, etc.

    uncountable
  3. Skillful creative activity, usually with an aesthetic focus.

    countable
    She's mastered the art of programming.
  4. The study and the product of these processes.

    uncountable
    He's at university to study art.
  5. Aesthetic value.

    uncountable
    Her photographs are nice, but there's no art in them.
  6. Artwork.

    uncountable
    Sotheby's regularly auctions art for millions.
    art collection
  7. A field or category of art, such as painting, sculpture, music, ballet, or literature.

    countable
    I'm a great supporter of the arts.
  8. (often in dichotomy with science) A subject understood best through intuition rather than methodology.

    countable
  9. Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation.

    countable
  10. Contrivance, scheming, manipulation.

    dated · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- Proto-Indo-European *h₂értis Proto-Italic *artis Latin ars Latin artemder. Old French artbor. Middle English art English art From Middle English art, from Old French art, from Latin artem, accusative of ars (“art”). Partly displaced native Old English cræft, whence Modern English craft. See also archaic English list (“art, craft, cunning, skill”).

verb/ɑːt/Received-Pronunciation/ɑɹt/General-American/ət/Received-Pronunciation/əɹt/General-American
  1. second-person singular simple present indicative of be: [you] are

    archaic · form-of · indicative · present · second-person · singular
    How great thou art!
Where this word comes from

From Middle English art, from Old English eart, second-person singular present indicative of wesan. Further etymology uncertain, see are. Cognate with Faroese ert and Icelandic ert.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.