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y an exercise of ingenuity; to devise; to invent; to design; to plan. What more likely to contrive this admirable frame of the universe than infinite wisdom. Tillotson. neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive aught against his life. Hawthorne.

Contrivance; invention; arrangement; design; plan. [Obs.] Consider the admirable contrivement and artifice of this great fabric. Glanvill. Active to meet their contrivements. Sir G. Buck.

One who contrives, devises, plans, or schemas. Swift.

To contrive or plan beforehand.

To revolve in the mind, or view in all its aspects; to contrive busily; to devise; to plot; as, politicians agitate desperate designs.

A contriver, designer, or maker. The architects of their own happiness. Milton. A French woman is a perfect architect in dress. Coldsmith.

Workmanship; a skillfully contrived work. The material universe.. in the artifice of God, the artifice of the best Mechanist. Cudworth.

One who makes or contrives; a deviser, inventor, or framer. "Artificer of fraud." Milton. The great Artificer of all that moves. Cowper.

Made or contrived by art; produced or modified by human skill and labor, in opposition to natural; as, artificial heat or light, gems, salts, minerals, fountains, flowers. Artificial strife Lives in these touches, livelier than life. Shak.

Contrived without skill or art; inartistic. [R.] Artless and massy pillars. T. Warton.

To fool; to delude or lead into error; to infatuate; to deceive. This story . . . contrived to befool credulous men. Fuller.

To foment or prepare, as by brewing; to contrive; to plot; to concoct; to hatch; as, to brew mischief. Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver! Milton.

To lay out; to contrive; to design; to plan. Lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet. Shak. To carve out, to make or get by cutting, or as if by cutting; to cut out. "[Macbeth] with his brandished steel . . . carved out his passage." Shak. Fortunes were carved out of the property of the crown. Macaula…

To contrive; to plan. [Archaic] The cloister . . . had, I doubt not, been cast for [an orange- house]. Sir W. Temple.

A humorous canon or round, so contrived that the singers catch up each other's words.

Made or contrived for getting small sums of money from the ignorant or unwary; as, a catchpenny book; a catchpenny show. -- n.

A private alphabet, system of characters, or other mode of writing, contrived for the safe transmission of secrets; also, a writing in such characters. His father . . . engaged him when he was very young to write all his letters to England in cipher. Bp. Burnet. Cipher key, a key to assist in reading writings in cipher…

quickly. -- To clap up. (a) To imprison hastily or without due formality. (b) To make or contrive hastily. [Obs.] "Was ever match clapped up so suddenly" Shak.

Contrived for the purpose of making a show, or gaining applause; deceptive; unreal.

ance; to tranquilize; to soothe; to calm; to quiet. Compose thy mind; Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed. Dryden.