In bridge, used to describe any bid which has some conventional meaning that doesn't indicate strength in the suit named. For example, if playing the weak two bid convention, opening bids of 2D, 2H, and 2S are used to indicate weak (below usual opening strength) hands with 6 or more cards in the suit named, while 2C is a strong artificial bid used to indicate any hand with 22 or more high card points. (As opposed to the strong two bid convention, in which all the 2-level opening bids represent strong hands with length in the suit named.)

Ar`ti*fi"cial (#), a. [L. artificialis, fr. artificium: cf. F. artificiel. See Artifice.]

1.

Made or contrived by art; produced or modified by human skill and labor, in opposition to natural; as, artificial heat or light, gems, salts, minerals, fountains, flowers.

Artificial strife Lives in these touches, livelier than life. Shak.

2.

Feigned; fictitious; assumed; affected; not genuine.

"Artificial tears."

Shak.

3.

Artful; cunning; crafty.

[Obs.]

Shak.

4.

Cultivated; not indigenous; not of spontaneous growth; as, artificial grasses.

Gibbon.

Artificial arguments Rhet., arguments invented by the speaker, in distinction from laws, authorities, and the like, which are called inartificial arguments or proofs. Johnson. -- Artificial classification Science, an arrangement based on superficial characters, and not expressing the true natural relations species; as, "the artificial system" in botany, which is the same as the Linnaean system. -- Artificial horizon. See under Horizon. Artificial light, any light other than that which proceeds from the heavenly bodies. -- Artificial lines, lines on a sector or scale, so contrived as to represent the logarithmic sines and tangents, which, by the help of the line of numbers, solve, with tolerable exactness, questions in trigonometry, navigation, etc. -- Artificial numbers, logarithms. -- Artificial person Law. See under Person. -- Artificial sines, tangents, etc., the same as logarithms of the natural, tangents, etc. Hutton.

 

© Webster 1913.

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