These words are all concerned with the act of bringing something into being that did not exist before. Create may suggest conscious intention, aesthetic discrimination, power, control or all these. It is most appropriate for situations in which the raw material and the finished product are very different from each other: a Supreme Being who creates the universe out of darkness and chaos; the novelist who creates a unique view of life by using everyday language; statesmen attempting to create world order out of the discords of warring nations. The word is also frequently used as a status word for far less significant pursuits: the fashion czar creating a new line of spring dresses.

Design and compose are like create in referring to aesthetic acts, but are more specific in their application. Someone who designs dresses, cars or stage sets may simply execute the plans for these products, leaving their actual construction to lesser craftsmen. Thus design emphasizes conception rather than building. Also, it suggests a less profound change from raw material to finished product than create : We can design techniques to prevent urban sprawl, but we can hardly create utopias from scratch at this late date. Compose , most specifically, refers to musical composition: to compose a symphony or a popular song. In this sense, it is more like create than design . In its passive use, however, the aesthetic implications disappear and the word refers to the possibly arbitrary constituents of a group or object: a city composed of many ethnic strains.

Make , the most general of these words, is pivotal in that it may apply to aesthetic or scientific acts on the one hand, or on the other to mere production of any kind: artists who make sculpture; biologist who make new species through hybridization; nations that make atom bombs; factories that make detergents. Because of the word’s wide range of possibility, a more specific word is sometimes preferable.

Invent in a scientific or technological context is parallel to design in its aesthetic context. The person who invents a product plans and tests a new concept, though he may leave its production to others. Just as create has more status than design in the arts, so discover, as the highest goal of the sciences, has more scientific status than invent : Gilbert discovered electricity, but Edison invented the light bulb.

Produce refers mostly to the mere turning out of work: the last years of his life in which Shakespeare produced no new plays. In another sense, however, the work implied by produce may be done by people who had no part in creating , designing or inventing the product: theatrical technicians who produces what the playwright creates ; seamstresses who produce the gowns fashion experts design; factories that produce the light bulbs based on the one Edison invented.