WordWeight : Weighing the Words

Pronunciation : 10
Definition : Defn: To black art; magic. [Obs.] Shak. Art and part (Scots Law), share or concern by aiding and abetting a criminal in the perpetration of a crime, whether by advice or by assistance in the execution; complicity.

Note: The arts are divided into various classes. The useful, mechanical, or industrial arts are those in which the hands and body are concerned than the mind; as in making clothes and utensils. These are called trades. The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with imagination taste, and are applied to the production of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music, painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and architecture. The liberal arts (artes liberales, the higher arts, which, among the Romans, only freemen were permitted to pursue) were, in the Middle Ages, these seven branches of learning, -- grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In modern times the liberal arts include the sciences, philosophy, history, etc., which compose the course of academical or collegiate education. Hence, degrees in the arts; master and bachelor of arts. In America, literature and the elegant arts must grow up side by side with the coarser plants of daily necessity. Irving.

Syn. -- Science; literature; aptitude; readiness; skill; dexterity; adroitness; contrivance; profession; business; trade; calling; cunning; artifice; duplicity. See Science.


Source : Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913