In*ven"tion (?), n. [L. inventio: cf. F. invention. See Invent.]
1. The act of finding out or inventing; contrivance or construction of that which
has not before existed; as, the invention of logarithms; the invention of the art of printing.
As the search of it
[truth] is the duty, so the invention will be the happiness of man.
Tatham.
2. That which is invented; an original contrivance or construction; a device; as, this fable was the invention of Esop; that falsehood was her own
invention.
We entered by the
drawbridge, which has an invention to let one fall
if not premonished.
Evelyn. 3. Thought; idea.
Shak.
4. A fabrication to deceive; a fiction; a forgery; a falsehood.
Filling their hearers
With strange invention.
Shak.
5. The faculty of inventing; imaginative faculty; skill or ingenuity in contriving anything new; as, a man of invention.
They lay no less than
a want of
invention to his charge; a
capital crime, . . . for a poet is a maker.
Dryden.
6. (Fine Arts, Rhet., etc.)
The exercise of the imagination in selecting and treating a theme, or more commonly in contriving the arrangement of a piece, or the method of
presenting its parts.
Invention of the cross (Eccl.),
a festival celebrated May 3d, in honor of the finding of our Savior's cross by St. Helena.
Hear it pronounced