How to Use artifice in a Sentence

artifice

noun
  • The whole story was just an artifice to win our sympathy.
  • He spoke without artifice or pretense.
  • You're stripped of all glamour and artifice on much of the show.
    — Jancee Dunn, Redbook, 17 May 2011
  • And in the Brechtian sense, there was a kind of artifice to the piece.
    — Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 5 Sep. 2024
  • And the stakes of those ends are, for all the artifice, far more real.
    — K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone, 17 Apr. 2021
  • The film, with its space-food-like artifice, only seems to be made of nothing at all.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 13 July 2022
  • Still, problems like this take the artifice of the game's facade and throw it right in your face.
    — Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 7 Dec. 2020
  • Despite the artifice and irony, this is also an earthy film, filled with mud and blood and flesh.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 4 Sep. 2025
  • Sometimes on the show, there’s a thin layer of artifice.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 4 May 2026
  • Spend less money on the artifice and be a little bit truer to yourself, to your kid and your ex.
    — Max Gao, HollywoodReporter, 21 Sep. 2025
  • There is no artifice once you're blasted in the face with scorching hot chicken wings.
    — Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek, 21 Mar. 2025
  • Fascism creates a world of artifice and sophistry.
    — Literary Hub, 27 Apr. 2026
  • The fireworks, the razzmatazz, the artifice do not add to the sense of occasion.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 27 May 2017
  • Time and again in his filmography, the artifice is the very point.
    — Chris Vognar, Chron, 19 Apr. 2023
  • Shift position even slightly, though, and the artifice is plain to see.
    — Charles Desmarais, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 May 2018
  • There was a great sense of artifice because of the sense of magic that her character adopts.
    — Bill Desowitz, IndieWire, 15 Jan. 2025
  • Nunez pleaded guilty to a fraudulent schemes and artifices charge.
    — Jessica Boehm, azcentral, 10 May 2018
  • All the artifice and showmanship of singing falls away and the father simply speaks his lines.
    — Justin Davidson, Vulture, 24 Nov. 2021
  • His affinity for shooting in black and white was as well-known as his distaste for ageism and artifice.
    — Cady Lang, Time, 5 Sep. 2019
  • Beneath all the artifice, though, the same old turkey remains.
    — Elizabeth G. Dunn and Matthew Kronsberg, WSJ, 31 Oct. 2018
  • But the difference, of course, is that the suffering on those shows is artifice.
    — Alexander Woo, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 June 2024
  • Does that ground the film in reality or heighten the the artifice?
    — Stuart Miller, Orange County Register, 12 Feb. 2025
  • Even in the film’s lighting there isn’t much artifice except where it was deemed necessary.
    — Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 15 Jan. 2022
  • And with [handheld], there’s so much artifice behind the camera.
    — Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2025
  • There is no artifice to it, unlike Austin, which is self-consciously weird at this point.
    — Craig Hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, 16 Apr. 2018
  • That way, the way of camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.
    — Scarlett Newman, Teen Vogue, 3 May 2019
  • That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of artifice, of stylization.
    — Scarlett Newman, Teen Vogue, 2 Apr. 2019
  • Unlike many child actors, Ziegler doesn’t have a trace of cuteness or artifice.
    — Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2024
  • Her crime, of course, was the obvious artifice, the resorting to cheap tricks.
    — New York Times, 10 May 2021
  • The use of vocoder fosters a discourse on performance, artifice, and camp.
    — Angelica Frey, JSTOR Daily, 9 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'artifice.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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