Artificial means made by people or machines rather than grown by nature. Artificial light, artificial flavouring, an artificial lake.
It is neutral in technical use — an artificial hip, artificial insemination, artificial intelligence — and faintly negative about food and manner: artificial colours, an artificial smile. Synthetic and man-made are the near equivalents. Note artifice, meaning cunning; artificial intelligence, which is now usually just AI; and that natural is the opposite in the food sense and real in the emotional one.
1adjectiveartificialMade by people or machines rather than by nature.
“The pitch is made of artificial grass, so it never needs mowing.”
synonyms: man-made, synthetic
2adjectivesincereNot sincere.
“There was an artificial cheerfulness about the whole meeting.”
artificial is a quality of being made.
Also accepted in games: man-made, synthetic
Latin artificialis comes from artificium, a craft — ars, skill, plus facere, to make. Something artificial is made by skill, which is why art and artificial are the same root and have drifted so far apart.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
artificiālis
Middle English
artificial — man-made
English, today
artificial
Built from
From Middle English artificial (“man-made”) via Old French - (modern French artificiel), from Latin artificiālis from artificium (“skill”), from artifex, from ars (“skill”), and -fex, from facere (“to make”). Displaced native cræftlīċ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA