different between artifact vs feature

English

Etymology

Alteration of artefact, from Italian artefatto, from Latin arte (“by skill”) (ablative of ars (“art”)) + factum (“thing made”) (from facio (“to make, do”)).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???t?fækt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???t?fækt/, [-??-], [-??-]
• Hyphenation: ar?ti?fact

Noun

artifact (plural artifacts)

1. An object made or shaped by human hand or labor.
2. An object made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, not necessarily of direct human origin.
3. Something viewed as a product of human agency or conception rather than an inherent element.
   • 2004, Philip Weiss, American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps

     The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy.
4. A finding or structure in an experiment or investigation that is not a true feature of the object under observation, but is a result of external action, the test arrangement, or an experimental error.

5. (archaeology) An object, such as a tool, ornament, or weapon of archaeological or historical interest, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
6. (biology) An appearance or structure in protoplasm due to death, the method of preparation of specimens, or the use of reagents, and not present during life.
7. (computing) A perceptible distortion that appears in an audio or video file or a digital image as a result of applying a lossy compression algorithm.

Usage notes

The spelling artifact is preferred by most American dictionaries, while artefact is the preferred spelling in Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary with artifact listed as a variant.

Alternative forms

• artefact (Australian and British spelling)

Translations

Further reading

• artifact in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• “artifact”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

English

Etymology

From Middle English feture, from Anglo-Norman feture, from Old French faiture, from Latin fact?ra. Doublet of facture.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?fi?t??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?fit??/
• Rhymes: -i?t??(?)

Noun

feature (plural features)

1. (obsolete) One's structure or make-up: form, shape, bodily proportions.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.ii:

     all the powres of nature, / Which she by art could vse vnto her will, / And to her seruice bind each liuing creature; / Through secret vnderstanding of their feature.

2. An important or main item.
3. (media) A long, prominent article or item in the media, or the department that creates them; frequently used technically to distinguish content from news.
   1. (film) Ellipsis of feature film
4. Any of the physical constituents of the face (eyes, nose, etc.).
5. (computing) A beneficial capability of a piece of software.
6. The cast or structure of anything, or of any part of a thing, as of a landscape, a picture, a treaty, or an essay; any marked peculiarity or characteristic.
7. (archaeology) Something discerned from physical evidence that helps define, identify, characterize, and interpret an archeological site.

   • A feature of many Central Texas prehistoric archeological sites is a low spreading pile of stones called a rock midden. Other features at these sites may include small hearths.

8. (engineering) Characteristic forms or shapes of parts. For example, a hole, boss, slot, cut, chamfer, or fillet.
9. (statistics, machine learning) An individual measurable property or characteristic of a phenomenon being observed.
10. (music) The act of being featured in a piece of music.
11. (linguistics) The elements into which linguistic units can be broken down.

    Hyponyms: gender, number, person, tense

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:characteristic

Derived terms

• featural
• feature article

Translations

Further reading

• feature in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Verb

feature (third-person singular simple present features, present participle featuring, simple past and past participle featured)

1. (transitive) To ascribe the greatest importance to something within a certain context.
2. (transitive) To star, to contain.
3. (intransitive) To appear, to make an appearance.
4. (transitive, dated) To have features resembling.
   • Sunday. Reading for the Young (page 219)

     More than his talents, Roger grudged him his looks, the brown eyes, golden hair, and oval face, which made people say how Johnny Weir featured his mother.

Translations

Middle English

Noun

feature

1. Alternative form of feture