Invencioun

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of devising or creating something new, or in Middle English writing, a thing made by ingenuity ; a newly contrived device or artifice ; a deceitful fabrication or cunning trick
2. Coming up with something original through ingenuity ; a clever device or contrivance devised by someone ; a false story or sly deception made up to mislead
3. The process of conceiving a new idea or object ; the thing that results from such ingenuity ; a crafty fabrication designed to deceive or trick someone

Etymology: "Invencioun" is a Middle English spelling of "invention," and the word had a very different range of meanings in the Middle Ages. Borrowed from Old French "invention," it came from Latin "inventio," a noun built from "invenire," meaning "to come upon" or "to find." In its earliest English uses, the word meant the discovery or finding of something, and it was also used for the rhetorical act of finding material for a speech, a sense inherited from classical Latin oratory. Chaucer and his contemporaries used the word in the sense of contriving or devising something, and this is the sense the modern noun "invention" would later carry. The shift from "finding" to "making up" happened gradually, since a clever discovery and a clever contrivance both depend on ingenuity. Over the following centuries the sense of a new device or method came to dominate, while the older senses of discovery and rhetorical invention faded from ordinary use.