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.
