I've always wondered what 'liberal arts' exactly means compared to just art.

The liberal arts are those suitable for study by freemen, in Latin liber. The originally consisted of seven arts (fields): the trivium (i.e., grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (i.e., arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music)). Latin ars, artis, is more 'skill' or 'craft' than what we call art today. It corresponds to Greek τεχνη (tekhnē). I have often wondered how the term fine arts (French beaux arts, Spanish bellas artes) developed over time.

You see the same sort of development in the word science and history. In Latin scientia 'knowledge' corresponds to Greek ιστορια (historia). Both these words are related to English wit, German wissen 'to know'.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.