Other forms: arts
Art is the beautiful things people create — paintings, sculpture, music and more. Modern art, a work of art, study art.
The fine arts traditionally mean painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. The arts, plural, means the whole cultural field including theatre and literature. Art also means skill acquired by practice: the art of conversation, the art of the possible. Note artist, artistic, artful, which means cunning; and that art originally meant any skill at all, which is why medicine and war both had arts.
1nounartBeautiful things people create.
“The walls of the café are covered in art made by local students.”
2nounskillA skill acquired by practice.
“The art of conversation takes roughly a lifetime.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
art is creative work or skill.
Latin artem meant a skill or craft, from a root meaning to fit together. Art, article, artisan and even arm are related, and the modern narrowing to painting and sculpture is quite recent.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂er-
Middle English
art
English, today
art
Built from
From Middle 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA