artificer
/ɑːˈtɪfɪsə
/noun
1A skilled mechanic in the armed forces.The separate pay scales for artificers / technicians and for other branches will disappear....
- Engine room artificers, boatswains, tugboat crews and quartermasters in the harbour master section (navigation branch) of the Sri Lanka Port Authority began an overtime boycott on November 12.
- A certain number of foreman artificers, electricians, blacksmiths etc, are also required for service with the army.
2 archaic A skilled craftsman or inventor: figurative the artificers of their pleasure...
- The grant was for land to provide a site for a Trades Hall and Literary Institute at Sydney for the use of artificers and operatives.
- In every civilization, the skilled artificer has an honored place beside the scribe and the shaman.
- Peacham, indeed, offered drawing as ‘a gentleman's exercise’ which could also serve ‘for the necessarie use and generall benefite of diuers trades-men and artificers, as namly painters, ioyners, free-masons, cutters, and carvers.’
Origin
Late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French, probably an alteration of Old French artificien, from artifice (see artifice).