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[13] Like arm, arthritis, and article, art goes back to an Indo-European root *ar-, which meant ‘put things together, join’. Putting things together implies some skill: hence Latin ars ‘skill’. Its stem art- produced Old French art, the source of the English word. It brought with it the notion of ‘skill’, which it still retains; the modern association with painting, sculpture, etc did not begin until the mid 17th century. Latin derivatives of ars include the verb artīre ‘instruct in various skills’, from which ultimately English gets artisan [16]; and artificium, a compound formed with a variant of facere ‘do, make’, from which we get artificial [14].
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