Factitious

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /fækˈtɪʃəs/

Definitions

1. Made or produced deliberately rather than naturally ; created or engineered by human effort, not occurring spontaneously
2. Describes something that is not genuine but fabricated or contrived ; refers to something formed or put together by design rather than by natural causes
3. Characterized by an unnatural or feigned quality ; created or brought about through intentional means instead of arising naturally

Etymology: Ancient Latin speakers had a near-twin of this word that ended up in an entirely different corner of English. "Factitious" comes from Latin "factitius," meaning "artificial," which grew from "facere," "to make or do," the same root that gives us "factory" and "fact." The Latin word itself was an alternate form of "factīcius," built on that verb, so the core idea was always something manufactured rather than something found in nature. The surprise is the doublet. "Fetish" descends from the same Latin root, passing through Portuguese "feitiço," a word for a charm or made object, and it reached English with a religious and then anthropological sense of a manufactured object invested with power. "Factitious" kept the plainer meaning of artificial, while "fetish" went off to become a term for an object of obsessive devotion.

Synonyms: artificial, fake, insincere, manufactured, contrived

Antonyms: genuine, real, authentic, natural