While we’ve taken a look at artificial here on the blog before, I apparently haven’t actually looked more deeply at the history of that root word, art. So…let’s!
I suppose it’s not surprising that the idea of art goes back to the origins of humanity. We are, after all, creative beings. But I always find it fascinating to learn which words date back to the earliest recorded human language. Well, art is definitely one of them. The word is used in English from the 1200s onward, coming to us from the Old French art, dating from the 900s, which in turn came from Latin artem, which is from the proto-indo-european areti. All of these words get at the same meaning: “craft, skill, work of art, something prepared.”
Interestingly, weaponry–arms, or the Latin arma–is from the same root, being things that are crafted and fitted together.
In Middle English around the year 1300, art began to be applied to “skill in learning,” which is where we get educational words like “liberal arts” and “bachelor of arts.” Later that same century, art began to be used to indicate “human workmanship” as opposed to what occurs naturally.
It wasn’t until the 1600s that the word began to be used specifically of the creative arts like painting, sculpture, and so on.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
