1. The employment of means to accomplish some desired end; the adaptation of things in the natural
world to the uses of life; the application of knowledge or power to practical purposes.
Blest with each grace of nature and of art.
Pope.
2. A system of rules serving to facilitate the performance of certain actions; a system of principles and
rules for attaining a desired end; method of doing well some special work; — often contradistinguished
from science or speculative principles; as, the art of building or engraving; the art of war; the art of
navigation.
Science is systematized knowledge . . . Art is knowledge made efficient by skill.
J. F. Genung.
3. The systematic application of knowledge or skill in effecting a desired result. Also, an occupation or
business requiring such knowledge or skill.
The fishermen can't employ their art with so much success in so troubled a sea.
Addison.
4. The application of skill to the production of the beautiful by imitation or design, or an occupation in
which skill is so employed, as in painting and sculpture; one of the fine arts; as, he prefers art to literature.
5. pl. Those branches of learning which are taught in the academical course of colleges; as, master of
arts.
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts.
Pope.
Four years spent in the arts (as they are called in colleges) is, perhaps, laying too laborious a foundation.
Goldsmith.
6. Learning; study; applied knowledge, science, or letters. [Archaic]
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Pope.
7. Skill, dexterity, or the power of performing certain actions, acquired by experience, study, or observation; knack; as,
a man has the art of managing his business to advantage.
8. Skillful plan; device.
They employed every art to soothe . . . the discontented warriors.
Macaulay.
9. Cunning; artifice; craft.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
Shak.
Animals practice art when opposed to their superiors in strength.
Crabb.
10. The black art; magic. [Obs.] Shak.
Art and part (Scots Law), share or concern by aiding and abetting a criminal in the perpetration of a
crime, whether by advice or by assistance in the execution; complicity.
The arts are divided into various classes.
The useful, mechanical, or industrial arts are those in
which the hands and body are more concerned than the mind; as in making clothes and utensils. These
are called trades. The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with imagination and taste, and
are applied to the production of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music, painting, engraving, sculpture,
and architecture; but the term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and architecture. The liberal arts
(artes liberales, the higher arts, which, among the Romans, only freemen were permitted to pursue)
were, in the Middle Ages, these seven branches of learning, — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry,
music, and astronomy. In modern times the liberal arts include the sciences, philosophy, history, etc.,
