Craft vs. Handicraft — What's the Difference?

A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale production of goods, or their maintenance, for example by tinkers.

A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated related tools like scissors, carving implements, or hooks. It is a traditional main sector of craft making and applies to a wide range of creative and design activities that are related to making things with one's hands and skill, including work with textiles, moldable and rigid materials, paper, plant fibers,clay etc.

Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts; proficiency.

Activity involving the making of decorative domestic or other objects by hand

Skill in evasion or deception; guile.

Skill and facility with the hands.

An occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or skilled artistry.

A craft or occupation requiring skilled use of the hands.

The practitioners of such an occupation or trade considered as a group.

An object that is crafted by skilled hands.

Pl. craft A boat, ship, aircraft, or spacecraft.

A trade requiring skill of hand; manual occupation; handcraft.

Crafts Items made by craftspeople.

An artifact produced by handicraft.

To make or construct (something) with care or ingenuity.

A man who earns his living by handicraft; a handicraftsman.

Strength; power; might; force .

A trade requiring skill of hand; manual occupation; handcraft.

(uncountable) Intellectual power; skill; art.

A man who earns his living by handicraft; a handicraftsman.

Ability, skilfulness, especially skill in making plans and carrying them into execution; dexterity in managing affairs, adroitness, practical cunning; ingenuity in constructing, dexterity .

A work produced by hand labor

Cunning, art, skill, or dexterity applied to bad purposes; artifice; guile; subtlety; shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception .

A craft that requires skillful hands

(obsolete) Occult art, magic .

A work or product of art .

(collective or plural) Handmade items, especially domestic or decorative objects; handicrafts .

A device, a means; a magical device, spell or enchantment .

Learning of the schools, scholarship; a branch of learning or knowledge, a science, especially one of the ‘seven liberal arts’ of the medieval universities .

(uncountable) Skill, skilfulness, art, especially the skill needed for a particular profession .

A branch of skilled work or trade, especially one requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill, but sometimes applied equally to any business, calling or profession; the skilled practice of a practical occupation .

(countable) A trade or profession as embodied in its practitioners collectively; the members of a trade or handicraft as a body; an association of these; a trade's union, guild, or ‘company’ .

A vehicle designed for navigation in or on water or air or through outer space .

(nautical) Boats, especially of smaller size than ships. Historically primarily applied to vessels engaged in loading or unloading of other vessels, as lighters, hoys, and barges.

Those vessels attendant on a fleet, such as cutters, schooners, and gun-boats, generally commanded by lieutenants.

(figurative) A woman.

Implements used in catching fish, such as net, line, or hook. Modern use primarily in whaling, as in harpoons, hand-lances, etc. .

To make by hand and with much skill.

To construct, develop something (like a skilled craftsman).

(video games) To combine multiple items to form a new item, such as armour or medicine.

Strength; might; secret power.

Art or skill; dexterity in particular manual employment; hence, the occupation or employment itself; manual art; a trade.

Those engaged in any trade, taken collectively; a guild; as, the craft of ironmongers.

Cunning, art, or skill, in a bad sense, or applied to bad purposes; artifice; guile; skill or dexterity employed to effect purposes by deceit or shrewd devices.

A vessel; vessels of any kind; - generally used in a collective sense.

To play tricks; to practice artifice.

The skilled practice of a practical occupation;

A vehicle designed for navigation in or on water or air or through outer space

People who perform a particular kind of skilled work;

Skill in an occupation or trade

Shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception

Make by hand and with much skill;