abstract
IPA: æbstrˈækt
noun
- An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
- Something that concentrates in itself the qualities of a larger item, or multiple items.
- Concentrated essence of a product.
- (medicine) A powdered solid extract of a medicinal substance mixed with lactose.
- An abstraction; an abstract term; that which is abstract.
- The theoretical way of looking at things; something that exists only in idealized form.
- (art) An abstract work of art.
- (real estate) A summary title of the key points detailing a tract of land, for ownership; abstract of title.
verb
- (transitive) To separate; to disengage.
- (transitive) To remove; to take away; withdraw.
- (transitive, euphemistic) To steal; to take away; to remove without permission.
- (transitive, obsolete) To extract by means of distillation.
- (transitive) To draw off (interest or attention).
- (intransitive, reflexive, literally, figuratively) To withdraw oneself; to retire.
- (transitive) To consider abstractly; to contemplate separately or by itself; to consider theoretically; to look at as a general quality.
- To conceptualize an ideal subgroup by means of the generalization of an attribute, as follows: by apprehending an attribute inherent to one individual, then separating that attribute and contemplating it by itself, then conceiving of that attribute as a general quality, then despecifying that conceived quality with respect to several or many individuals, and by then ideating a group composed of those individuals perceived to possess said quality.
- (intransitive, rare) To perform the process of abstraction.
- (intransitive, fine arts) To create abstractions.
- (intransitive, computing) To produce an abstraction, usually by refactoring existing code. Generally used with "out".
- (transitive) To summarize; to abridge; to epitomize.
adjective
- (obsolete) Derived; extracted.
- (now rare) Drawn away; removed from; apart from; separate.
- Not concrete: conceptual, ideal.
- Insufficiently factual.
- Apart from practice or reality; vague; theoretical; impersonal; not applied.
- (grammar) As a noun, denoting a concept or intangible as opposed to an object, place, or person.
- Difficult to understand; abstruse; hard to conceptualize.
- Separately expressing a property or attribute of an object that is considered to be inherent to that object: attributive, ascriptive.
- Pertaining comprehensively to, or representing, a class or group of objects, as opposed to any specific object; considered apart from any application to a particular object: general, generic, nonspecific; representational.
- (archaic) Absent-minded.
- (art) Pertaining to the formal aspect of art, such as the lines, colors, shapes, and the relationships among them.
- (art, often capitalized) Free from representational qualities, in particular the non-representational styles of the 20ᵗʰ century.
- (music) Absolute.
- (dance) Lacking a story.
- (object-oriented programming, of a class) Being a partial basis for subclasses rather than a complete template for objects.
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Examples of "abstract" in Sentences
- The idea was abstract.
- The abstract verified the claim.
- The quote is not in the abstract.
- The abstract is part of the paper.
- The abstract states the following.
- A perceivable world is an abstraction.
- It is exactly the words of the abstract.
- The Internet is an intangible abstraction.
- It is in the abstract section of the document.
- The implementation is leaky, not the abstraction.
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