Artificial

Made or contrived by art or skill; not natural. "The curtains closely drawn the light to screen, As if he had contrived to lie unseen: Thus cover'd with an artificial night, Sleep did his office." - Dryden. cester. Articles of Confedera'tion. The title of the compact which was made by the 13 original States of the U. States of America. It was adopted and carried into force on the first day of March, 1781, and remained as the supreme law until the first Wednesday of March, 1789. Articles of Faith. ( Eccl . Hist .) A point of Christian doctrine established by the Church, as the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, for which see PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Artic'ular, a . [Lat. articular is , from articulus , a joint.] Belonging to the joints, or to an article. Artic'ularly, adv . Articulately. Articulation, n . [Fr., from Lat. articulatio .] ( Gram .) Literally , uttering "by joints" (see ARTICLE); hence, the sounding of letters or of syllables distinctly and apart from each other. Therefore, a good A. consists in giving every letter and syllable of a word its due pronunciation. Exactne in A. corresponds to propriety in spelling, and is an object that ought to be aimed after by all. The Greeks and Romans paid particular attention to this subject, which constituted a principal branch of instruction; and the smallest error in pronunciation was regarded by them as disgraceful. An indistinct A. usually arises from too great precipitancy of speech, or from an improper use of the vocal organs. The latter of these may be cured by attending to the proper position of the tongue, lips, ., in the formation of each letter; the former is to be got over by continued practice in reading aloud slowly and distinctly. ( Anat . ) The skeleton is composed of a great number of bones, which are all so admirably constructed, and with so much affinity to each other, that the extremity of every bone is perfectly adjusted to the end of the bone with which it is connected; and this connection is termed their articulation. The articulations are divided into diarthroses , or movable articulations, and synarthroses, or immovable. - See SKELETON. (Bot.) See JOINT.