craft

craft

1. [N-COUNT] You can refer to a boat, a spacecraft, or an aircraft as a craft: With great difficulty, the fisherman manoeuvred his small craft close to the reef. 
   
   
2. [N-COUNT] A craft is an activity such as weaving, carving, or pottery that involves making things skilfully with your hands: 
    .. All kinds of traditional craft industries are preserved here. 
   
   
3. [N-COUNT] You can use craft to refer to any activity or job that involves doing something skilfully: 
    .. Maurice Murphy, one of the country's leading classical trumpeters, learnt his craft with the Black Dyke Mills band. 
   
   
4. [VERB] If something is crafted, it is made skilfully: 
    .. The windows would probably have been crafted in the latter part of the Middle Ages. 
    .. Many delegates were willing to craft a compromise. 
    .. The author extracts the maximum from every carefully-crafted scene in this witty tale.    
    .. original, hand-crafted bags at affordable prices.

.... Collins Cobuild

craft: noun only

1. Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts; proficiency. See Synonyms at art1.
2. Skill in evasion or deception; guile. 
3. (a). An occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or skilled artistry. 
   (b). The membership of such an occupation or trade; guild. 
4. pl. craft A boat, ship, or aircraft.

... Am Heritage

Usage Note: craft as a verb

Craft has been used as a verb since the Old English period and was used in Middle English to refer specifically to the artful construction of a text or discourse. 

• In recent years, crafted, the past participle of craft, has enjoyed a vogue as a participle referring to well-wrought writing. 
• Craft is more acceptable when applied to literary works than to other sorts of writing, 
• and more acceptable as a participle than as a verb. 

73 percent of the Usage Panel accepts the phrase "beautifully crafted prose". By contrast, only 35 percent accept the sentence "The planners crafted their proposal so as to anticipate the objections of local businesses".

... Am Heritage

Thesaurus Roget II: craft

1. Natural or acquired facility in a specific activity: ability, adeptness, art, command, expertise, expertness, knack, mastery, proficiency, skill, technique. (Informal) know-how. See ability/inability, knowledge/ignorance. 
2. Deceitful cleverness: art, artfulness, artifice, craftiness, cunning, foxiness, guile, slyness, wiliness. See honest/dishonest, means. 
3. Lack of straightforwardness and honesty in action: chicanery, craftiness, deviousness, dishonesty, indirection, shadiness, shiftiness, slyness, sneakiness, trickery, trickiness, underhandedness. See honest/dishonest. 
4. Activity pursued as a livelihood: art, business, calling, career, employment, job, line, métier, occupation, profession, pursuit, trade, vocation, work. Slang racket. Archaic employ. See action/inaction.