invention Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun the creation of something in the mind
    design; conception; excogitation; innovation.
  2. noun a creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation
    innovation.
  3. noun the act of inventing

WordNet

In*ven"tion noun
Etymology
L. inventio: cf. F. invention. See Invent.
Definitions
  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.

Webster 1913