the.com/artifice
nature's most honest invention: the lie that admits it's a lie and dazzles anyway
means Clever skill or trickery used to deceive or to create a convincing artificial effect, especially when craft is doing the work nature won't.
from From Latin artificium, "a craft, a making by skill," built from ars, artis ("art, skill") plus the root facere ("to make") — the same fabricating impulse buried in factory, fiction, and effect. It entered English through Old French as a neutral word for craftsmanship, then slowly soured: by the time it reached us, the "skill" had picked up a whiff of the sly, and a cunning maker became a cunning deceiver.
- latin roots
- from ars and facere: skilled making
- orchids cheat
- some mimic female wasps to trick males into pollinating
- theater origin
- Greek skene was literally a painted fake building
- birds fake
- plovers feign broken wings to lure predators away
- flip side
- once meant clever skill before it meant deception
trojan horse — wooden horse used to deceive troy during the trojan war, enabling greeks to enter the city
potemkin villages — fake settlements built by grigory potemkin in 1787 to impress catherine the great during her tour