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."
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; she patented five inventions. "We entered by the drawbridge, which has an invention to let one fall if not premonished."
4.A fabrication to deceive; a fiction; a forgery; a falsehood. "Filling their hearers With strange invention."
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."
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.
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