Invention
Invention , noun
[Latin inventio: compare French invention. See Invent.]
1.
The act of finding out or inventing; contrivance or construction of that which has not before existed; as, the invention of logarithms; the invention of the art of printing.
As the search of it [truth] is the duty, so the invention will be the happiness of man.
2.
That which is invented; an original contrivance or construction; a device; as, this fable was the invention of Esop; that falsehood was her own invention; she patented five inventions.
We entered by the drawbridge, which has an invention to let one fall if not premonished.
3.
Thought; idea. — Shakespeare
4.
A fabrication to deceive; a fiction; a forgery; a falsehood.
Filling their hearers
With strange invention.
5.
The faculty of inventing; imaginative faculty; skill or ingenuity in contriving anything new; as, a man of invention.
They lay no less than a want of invention to his charge; a capital crime,... for a poet is a maker.
6.
(Fine Arts, Rhetoric, etc.) The exercise of the imagination in selecting and treating a theme, or more commonly in contriving the arrangement of a piece, or the method of presenting its parts.
Collocations (1)
Invention of the cross (Ecclesiastical) , a festival celebrated May 3d, in honor of the finding of our Savior's cross by St. Helena.