In·ven·tion n.
 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; she patented five inventions.
    We entered by the drawbridge, which has an invention to let one fall if not premonished.   --Evelyn.
 3. Thought; idea.
 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.

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