Definition of abstract in English:

abstract

adjective ˈabstrakt

1Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.
abstract concepts such as love or beauty
Example sentencesExamples
- It means a combination of things, both abstract and physical.
- Freedom of the press is not an abstract concept, freedom of the press has a purpose: to deliver the truth.
- This is a laudable but somewhat abstract concept.
- Making haiku is a most effective way of exploring ways of expressing abstract concepts in concrete language, of pulling out the essence of a feeling and making it into something unique.
- What is relevant in the economic realm is not an abstract concept or formula - no matter how beautiful - but its physical embodiment.
- In that profession you start with a blank sheet of paper and a concept or abstract idea.
- One conclusion that one might be tempted to draw from this is that mathematical truths cannot, after all, imply the existence of specific abstract objects of any kind.
- In the high Arctic, climate change isn't an abstract concept
- Or is it an abstract place existing inside people's minds?
- Wilber has so far failed to attract the large mainstream audience that his ideas deserve - in part because his writing is so often abstract and theoretical.
- The function of a metaphor is to explain one thing in terms of another thing - typically, to clarify an abstract concept by comparing it to something concrete.
- Even at the time, it was very obvious to me that these were not people who were interested in ideas or ethereal, abstract notions of human liberty.
- Fabre explains that his metaphors are simultaneously real and illusory, physical and abstract, living and dead.
- Numbers in early historical times were thought of much more concretely than the abstract concepts which are our numbers today.
- The colours each had several meanings, some of which were abstract ideas, some concrete as in the cattle and sheep example.
- Like Borges, his writing examines the consequences of abstract theories in the physical world.
- Thus, ‘the Chinese are always forced by the very nature of the language to resort to concrete expression for abstract concepts’.
- It will be easier at this time to put abstract ideas into concrete form.
- One of the reasons is undoubtedly that stories bring ideas to life and help readers see abstract concepts in action.
- Poetry allows us to examine science in a way that purely scientific discourse cannot by analogizing abstract concepts into concrete forms.
- I urge that the general public be made more aware of this very useful result of a very abstract physical theory.
Synonyms
theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic
hypothetical, speculative, conjectural, conjectured, suppositional, putative
rare suppositious, suppositive, ideational
1. 1.1 Dealing with ideas rather than events.
  the novel was too abstract and esoteric to sustain much attention
  Example sentencesExamples
  The pace is languid and events too abstract to be a children's movie, yet corny stunts alienate mature viewers.
  Her comments in interviews and at readings, likewise, reveal the startling literalness of her apparently abstract, difficult poems.
  The choreography is abstract and seemed very difficult - it demands strong technique and exactness.
  Here's a big goof that new web writers frequently make: writing copy that's too abstract, too esoteric, too philosophical.
  The other dream was a lot more abstract and involved.
  Looking at German games, all of them have a strong abstract base to them.
  Neither has Lane done himself any favours by dispensing with a chronological narrative in favour of themed chapters with abstract titles such as Complicity and Betrayal.
  Potokar's poetry seems rather abstract, at times cryptic, but at the same time palpable and relentless in its attempt to fight despair and solitude.
  Some people feel modern dance is difficult to follow, somewhat abstract or esoteric.
  Certainly, if last night's showing was anything to go by, his work was somewhat abstract and obscure, and obviously an acquired taste.
  These stories are not abstract or theoretical and they communicate a local opinion directly.
  I found it abstract and rather unmoving, more of an idea for a drama than a compelling drama itself.
  This debate may appear rather abstract right now.
  But the same critics applauded our next production, ‘Search for my Tongue’, which was abstract and based on the loss of identity.
  After all, math is so abstract that it's hard to communicate ideas to other mathematicians.
  At the moment, for many, it's just too abstract and theoretical.
  Lyrics are abstract and often inscrutable, but powerful images sometime fight through the verbal and instrumental haze.
  Video has a place on blogs, especially in reporting about tsunamis and other events that are dramatic and not abstract.
  It's about the right image going with the right story in the right direction, rather than it being abstract.
  They are very abstract, based on mythical and dreamy themes.
  Synonyms
  abstruse, obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied, recondite, difficult, hard, puzzling, perplexing, enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, delphic
2. 1.2 Not based on a particular instance; theoretical.
  we have been discussing the problem in a very abstract manner
  Example sentencesExamples
  The reason for believing that it is a largely abstract and theoretical issue is that the Court of Appeal judgments implied strongly that that was so.
  It came through concrete example and abstract argument.
  But equally, he claimed that he was capable of dissociating himself from his physical disorders only through abstract thought.
  So a culture based on abstract reasoning, or on various metaphysical precepts, may itself be simply a product of evolutionary change.
  The question of Being, far from being too abstract or theoretical an issue, will prove to be important for understanding exile.
  I can understand why she has that impression; many gay-marriage advocates have talked about gay marriage in these rather loose and abstract terms.
  It is grotesquely, disastrously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation.
  Not some theoretical, abstract cost, but a real cost.
  For a longer piece of work, you would have the luxury to break down the symbols further and make those symbols interact in a more abstract manner, which will boost the power of the sigil.
  But these laws and theorems are not just abstract mathematics.
  Modem science, no matter how theoretical, speculative and abstract, strives finally for empirical evidence to test and confirm its truth claims.
  Courts are not supposed to decide questions which are merely moot, theoretical, abstract or hypothetical.
  While the research work is highly abstract and theoretical, it has practical applications in computer science, Goins notes.
  We respond to dangers that our ancestors equipped us to understand, like fire and fangs and claws, more readily than we respond to threats based on abstract reasoning.
  Second, this shaky notion was based on a highly abstract and contentious branch of physics known as string theory.
  They mean something more abstract - a philosophical schema for governing, which often amounts to a slogan to describe one's ideology.
  Those were theoretical or abstract possibilities not applying to this case.
  There, I can discuss things from my past in an abstract manner, without directly pointing fingers.
  My political culture is empirical rather than abstract.
  Once we get a hint we are capable of making the original more abstract and less concrete, of extending a concrete and singular concept into more abstract spheres.
  Synonyms
  theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic
3. 1.3 (of a noun) denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object.
  Example sentencesExamples
  One does not mind the ending, but one notices that when Taylor strings together abstract nouns, he is at his least compelling.
  As your Honours have seen the substantive provision of the Act is one which uses the abstract noun.
  How, if it's a category mistake to think that you can fight a war against it, do you organise an international campaign against an abstract noun?
  The former is an abstract noun, the latter is a person.
  You cannot have a war on an abstract noun. ‘Terrorism’ is that.
  There will be confusion if we continue to use the word ‘morality’ because it is an abstract noun.
  Verbs and adjectives are more abstract, and so are more difficult concepts for children's minds to grasp.
  All the stories were written specifically for this collection - all have abstract nouns as titles and all are thematically linked.
  Liberty is a ponderous and not-to-be-used-lightly abstract noun.
  And although ubuntu can be grammatically classified as an abstract noun, it is often employed in relational contexts.
  Perspicacity is an abstract noun describing a certain capacity of a certain capability.
  Sitor, according to Nirwan, often achieves this by using abstract nouns.
  The most difficult task for the mothers was to explain the concept of abstract nouns and mimetic words in Korean.
  The more the state expands in this way, the more success it will enjoy in the only one of its wars on abstract nouns it wages unremittingly - the War on Capital.
  Today in Mr. Danton's class, I got hit with a ruler again for saying love was a concrete noun and not an abstract one.
  There is nothing wrong in principle in waging war on an abstract noun; the British navy successfully waged a war on slavery, by which they meant a war on slavers.
  Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract.
  This is, strangely enough, an unusual example of an abstract noun being masculine in Hebrew - most of them are feminine.
  But terror is an abstract noun, not a country as our Constitution pickily insists for a war.
  But it is Brutus who is the most instantly recognisable modern figure in his use of abstract nouns to justify political ends.
2Relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures.
abstract pictures
Example sentencesExamples
- Rothko stresses that the contrast between abstract and representational painting is overdrawn, that all art has subject matter.
- It's a beautiful work of abstract colour and texture, of contrasting dark and light.
- His later style of the 1940s is more abstract and colour becomes the most important factor.
- The landscape background of Elizabeth's portrait in particular is remarkably abstract, using strong colour and thick impasto.
- In the '50s, he made heavily textured abstract paintings using crumpled mulberry paper and globs of oil paint.
- Goodwin now works in both representational and abstract modes.
- The layers of abstract colour in her current work recalls another German painter, Gerhard Richter.
- Boxer is perhaps best known for richly textured abstract canvases, championed by critic Clement Greenberg.
- This sort of abstract illusionism brings to mind certain early canvases by Bridget Riley.
- For these abstract artists, the external world is mediated by internal feelings.
- Their plainly representational knotty, bark-covered surface contrasts with the immaterial, abstract shapes of the molding.
- Several artists claimed to be the first to paint an abstract picture, rather as early photographers had wrangled over who had invented the camera.
- Her work is abstract, using geometrical shapes subtly arranged and typically painted in soft colours.
- I remember how Robert Motherwell didn't like the term abstract expressionism and preferred abstract automatism.
- These two shows, a few months apart, displayed the tactile and abstract effects she wrings from such small-scale marks.
- She is represented by two unprepossessing abstract heads rendered in polychrome clay.
- Both legs and abstract shapes contribute to an almost painterly overall compositional effect.
- They resemble cone-like wall sconces, and the colorful abstract shapes covering their surfaces appear to glow like stained glass windows.
- The lower half of the artwork consists of dark splotches and torn-paper abstract effects.
- Her use of abstract effects in the service of representation is striking and makes her art complex.
Synonyms
non-representational, non-realistic, non-pictorial, symbolic, impressionistic

verb əbˈstraktæbˈstrækt

[with object]

1abstract something fromConsider something theoretically or separately from (something else)
to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism
Example sentencesExamples
- You can know when a lake will freeze or a pot will boil by abstracting the big picture from all the little details.
- Reason however in the Edinburgh Enlightenment was still prior to experience: the people are a body ‘out there’; visible, and abstracted from action.
- These are two senses in which mathematics is an abstract subject: it abstracts the important features from a problem and it deals with objects that are not concrete and tangible.
- Succeeds because it's stylistically brilliant, and because it hooks the experience of being black in America into universal human experiences of rage and alienation without ever abstracting or moving away from the particulars of race.
- It has been said, for example, that Aquinas is not really interested in the Trinity and the incarnation, that he is chiefly concerned to promote a notion of God abstracted from orthodox Christian teaching.
- But, while Elkins writes good staccato dialogue, he abstracts his characters from society.
- From the mathematician's point of view, the advantage in abstracting a point from its diverse incarnations lies in the resulting generality.
- This becomes abstracted from the original idea, possibly to become unrecognizable.
- By relating what Gandhi said to what he did and by examining instances of satyagraha led by others, this book abstracts from the Indian experiments those essential elements that constitute the Gandhian technique.
- The flaw in that approach, in our submission, is that it tends to dismember the definition of ‘refugee’ in Article 1A and then abstracts a particular element from its context and seeks to say that the Tribunal must deal with that element.
- Surveys pick out contentious conclusions on divine unity and Trinity and Incarnation and other topoi, abstracted from the original warp and weft, as though the latter were mere packaging.
- The soul forms in itself likenesses of things inasmuch as, through the light of agent intellect, forms abstracted from sensible objects are made actually intelligible, so as to be received in the possible intellect.
- It shouldn't be abstracted from the debate about Europe's crisis.
- It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation.
2usually abstract something fromExtract or remove (something)
applications to abstract more water from streams
Example sentencesExamples
- Not only is the self unable to bestow form from lived life, but also the objects themselves cannot receive it until they are abstracted from their lived-life utility.
- The primary student concerns with Module 6, as with Module 4 and Module 5, were the time needed to complete the module and the frustration encountered in abstracting the necessary information from some of the computer systems.
- Greene was a poet, in the true sense of the word, and it is misleading and dangerous to abstract theological concepts from the work of a poet (a good poet), or from the drama of a concrete life.
- The water has not been ‘predrunk’; it is not abstracted from a river and is as good as the best water you could find anywhere, even bottled.
- Potato producers who abstract water from Pembrokeshire's rivers and streams could have their licences revoked by new European legislation.
- When devising a model, one tries to ignore as much as possible about the phenomenon under consideration, abstracting from it only those features that are essential to understanding its behaviour.
- But I take comfort in our inability to delineate the ‘entire picture’ - at best we can abstract a stable whole from the flow of its parts, and that can never be ‘true’.
- A potential toxic bloom has been found on the lake from which drinking water supplies for much of the county, including the towns of Killarney and Tralee and surrounding countryside, are abstracted.
- The point is this - we cannot abstract ideas from the historical epoch in which they appeared.
- Five of the lengthy series of lithographed modeles that Goupil aimed primarily at aspiring artists included motifs, mostly head studies, abstracted from Delaroche paintings.
- And, even though Patrick Mason's production is presented by Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Company, I question his decision to abstract the play from its Irish setting with its echoes of the Ulysses Night-town sequence.
- The most egregious of these is the tendency, exemplified by Norm and Omar, to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question.
- What makes the humanities (separate from the arts) important is that they take the areas where we have insufficient data and try to abstract useful principles from it.
- This intermediate acts as a base to abstract protons from the Zn-H 2 O to produce the nucleophilic Zn-OH - species.
- In retrospect this appears so, but we have to remember that he abstracted his axioms from observation of the real world.
- If we abstract the technical from its social context and cultural foundations, technology appears to develop outside of society, following a trajectory of its own making.
- I knew that I needed to abstract what I wanted from the general confusion and the disorder of the scene.
- The County Council has contacted all group schemes abstracting from Lough Arrow in relation to their presence.
- Thus, once mixes are abstracted from their interpersonal context and reified within a commercial context, they lose much of their meaning.
- If one wanted to abstract a general rule from the affair it might well be ‘to make a building look effeminate, trashy and like something out of Disneyworld, be sure to add banded pink stripes’.
Synonyms
extract, pump, draw (off), tap, suck, withdraw, remove, take out/away
separate, detach, isolate, dissociate
1. 2.1 Used euphemistically to indicate that someone has stolen something.
  his pockets contained all he had been able to abstract from the flat
  Example sentencesExamples
  He was sentenced to six years for the production of cannabis and four years for abstracting electricity.
  Synonyms
  purloin, thieve, take, take for oneself, help oneself to, loot, pilfer, abscond with, run off with, appropriate, carry off, shoplift
2. 2.2abstract oneself Withdraw.
  as our relationship deepened you seemed to abstract yourself
  Example sentencesExamples
  Bunting even botches an attempt by his wife to reconcile, abstracting himself from the romance of the moment in pursuit of a dry, theoretical point.
  It assumes humans can abstract themselves from reality and go romping through history looking for the all-powerful distant cause that will explain each and every aspect of our current situation.
  Rose found it hard to abstract herself from the lives of these women but she knew that she had to make that distance in order to tell their story without preaching her anger.
  One thing suggested here is that only when you are able to abstract yourself, to look at yourself as if at a distance, as if you were mourning yourself, can you recognize yourself in a way that allows you to remember that you are alive at all.
  I removed my ‘About’ page and I took a conscious decision to abstract myself (though of course I'm not naïve enough to think that you won't find my name if you really want to).
  She abstracted herself from her inconvenient desire; she set herself at a distance from it and inspected it, as if it were a fungus of the spirit, asserting itself without permission.
  So it's always the moment when I'm stuck in reality - I have to abstract myself from it.
  Even Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century decided that the mind must function primarily as intellect, abstracting itself from presence, to focus upon an ‘other’ that is external- ‘out there,’ whether that be called nature or God.
  It's melancholic, but never chilly in the way that much electronica can be and doesn't ever abstract itself out of existence.
  Indeed, its dramatic argument is that such a personality either abstracts itself out of existence or falls into contradiction and self-destructs.
  Synonyms
  leave, go, go away, go off, take one's leave, take oneself off, withdraw, absent oneself, say one's goodbyes, quit, make an exit, exit, break camp, decamp, retreat, beat a retreat, retire
3Make a written summary of (an article or book)
staff who abstract material for an online database
Example sentencesExamples
- Final data were abstracted directly from published articles or estimated from descriptive statistics presented in the articles.
- The microfiche are abstracted, indexed, and published in a bimonthly periodical titled Declassified Documents Catalog.
- Because ventilator data are not routinely abstracted into administrative data sets, community-based, longitudinal studies of changes in ALI therapy are not available.
- We thank Michelle Grondin for her help in retrieving articles and abstracting data and Nancy Cleary for her administrative assistance.
- It is abstracted and indexed in a wide array of major social science sources (as printed inside the front cover) but these are less commonly used by the biological sciences.
- Costs were figured from a health service perspective by abstracting data from primary care case records.
- We abstracted all prescriptions written by the doctor for the treatment of schizophrenia and diabetes between the start of the study period and the index date.
- As we abstracted data directly from original trial reports we minimised the effects of missing data and errors in transcription.
- Data were abstracted from each study and summarized.
- Summarizing (also called abstracting or generalizing) occurs when a student produces a short statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme.
- Conversely, the same volunteer scholar (noted by his initials at the end of the record) abstracted another article more thoroughly.
- This is the form in which the European Court abstracted the relevant part of Article 6 in paragraph of its decision.
- Final data were abstracted directly from the publications or estimated from data tabulations in the articles.
- Our article was critically reviewed and abstracted by York University at the request of the British
Synonyms
summarize, write a summary of, precis, abridge, condense, compress, shorten, cut down, abbreviate, synopsize
rare epitomize

noun ˈabstraktˈæbˌstrækt

1A summary of the contents of a book, article, or speech.
an abstract of her speech
Example sentencesExamples
- Content that we intend keeping free throughout this period includes abstracts of articles, rapid responses, and the Editor's Choice column.
- Dr. De Luca has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over 200 abstracts, a book, and holds 12 patents.
- Over the intervening years, over 20 research papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or as research abstracts.
- Furthermore, while abstracts of novel drug types were more likely to be presented at the meeting, they were no less likely than abstracts on non-novel drugs to be published.
- We categorized the articles using the abstracts, and, when necessary, we asked the authors to classify their work correctly.
- I found numerous abstracts and articles that contain good wound care as part of a general recommendation to practitioners, usually in the conclusion of the document.
- Some of the non-English articles provided an English abstract, while others did not.
- In my view, it is first necessary to remove all abstracts, conference talks, proceedings, and other unrefereed publications from the listing.
- In the meantime, many journals provide at their Web sites at least a limited listing of tables of contents of their most recent issues, sometimes with abstracts and occasional articles.
- They spent many hours searching in commercial databases, looking for abstracts and full-text articles.
- Two independent reviewers selected the relevant abstracts and articles.
- Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword.
- Today we are beginning to publish abstracts of speeches made at the conference.
- The present review includes a few large and several small trials published as abstracts or full articles in many journals.
- He has published over 60 articles, book chapters and abstracts.
- Journal articles usually have abstracts, so you can draw on these for guidance on how to approach this task.
- An abstract of this article has been published.
- The dissertation title should appear on all five abstracts, although only one should identify the author and provide a current mailing address and daytime telephone number.
- Click on the ‘enlarge image’ link to access a brief explanation and a link to the abstract for that article.
- We reviewed abstracts and selected relevant articles.
Synonyms
summary, synopsis, precis, résumé, outline, recapitulation, abridgement, condensation, digest, summation
French aperçu
North American wrap-up
archaic argument
rare epitome, conspectus
2An abstract work of art.
a big unframed abstract
Example sentencesExamples
- The works include landscapes, still lifes, figuratives, abstracts and pastels, by approximately 75 artists.
- Logically, they are abstracts and yet they seem to be pictures of something concrete, something in, perhaps, a third realm which is neither our mind nor the world.
- It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings.
- The choice of painting marked a departure from the norm for Finnegan; up till then landscapes and abstracts were the only paintings in her home.
- Working in acrylics, inks, and soft pastels her paintings range from tender abstracts depicting human emotions to more powerful and emotive images full of eastern promise and the mystical unknown.
- Some were boring portraits but the abstracts caught my gaze.
- It was a figurative abstract of Pare Argile holding his son as a newly born baby.
- The show consisted of figurative paintings, landscapes and abstracts.
- Gradually, the artist transited to pure abstracts, investing the image of nature with colours.
- Ranging from classic black and white shots featuring line and form to intriguing abstracts in colour, the exhibition charts Rob's photographic journey during this period.
- ‘If she were a painting she'd have to be an abstract by Picasso because she has so many faces,’ he said.
- Quinn, Rolando and Campbell report that contemporary abstracts and landscapes are their biggest sellers.
- He is now experimenting with big abstracts in oils.
- He has purchased a wide range of artwork, including colorful, cartoonish prints and wild abstracts framed in austere black mouldings.
- However, the customer wandered away to look at an abstract in big, bold colors.
- A good way to start is with the gallery devoted to his works on paper, which, aside from several highly covetable two-dimensional abstracts, includes dozens of sketches for major projects.
- Paint-Or-Die manages to represent a wide gamut of modern painting styles: colour-field painting, abstracts, figurative and representational styles are all here.
- She tried working in a different, much looser style and even painted abstracts, but her paintings in this new vein were coolly received and after 1962 she did not exhibit her work.
- He was surprised when the kids were more attracted to a showcase of Smithsonian abstracts than to a display of Mickey and Minnie art.
- Equally, every painting, however realistic, is an abstract.

Phrases

in the abstract

In a general way; without reference to specific instances.
there's a fine line between promoting US business interests in the abstract and promoting specific companies
Example sentencesExamples
- Your paper is in favour of home rule in the abstract but never, it seems in the actual practice.
- Mentoring is not effective or ineffective in the abstract, but has specific outcomes in specific circumstances.
- Still, people seem to be more fond of free speech in the abstract than in specific instances.
- We do not say that there is anything about calling up special reasons, generally, in the abstract, as being a vice in legislation.
- And that's certainly a good idea, at least in the abstract and as a general matter.
- Charter issues must be decided in the factual context before the court and not in the abstract or on hypothetical facts.
- I have a strong suspicion that generals are always better in the abstract than in reality.
- Corruption is generally held to be a vice, and viewed in the abstract, it is.
- Such ideals cannot be lived in the abstract, they must be performed.
- And if it isn't going to hurt any specific marriage, it isn't going to hurt marriage in the abstract.
- To solve a problem, you're therefore never very interested in Hindu law in the abstract.
Synonyms
in principle, on paper, in the abstract, all things being equal, in an ideal world

Derivatives

abstractly

adverb ˈabstraktli

More abstractly: how do you convince them that there is value in nuance and ambiguity, in seeing the world in shades of grey?
Example sentencesExamples
- If they do, your children will have far more chance of learning to think abstractly by the end of their GCSEs, and some of them might end up at university studying science or possibly even become scientists.
- It takes years to learn to think hypothetically and abstractly.
- Many law students tend to phrase things too abstractly; this exercise aims to help them make their writing more concrete and therefore clearer and more effective.
- Somehow hearing abstractly about 6 million killed just does not make the same emotional connection as reading the full story of one little girl and her family.

abstractor

noun abˈstraktə

A person who analyses or summarizes information, in particular a person whose job is to collect and maintain data or records.
we require an abstractor for our new research and development centre
Example sentencesExamples
- Even when they are, researchers must try to control for variations in quality; author-supplied abstracts, for example, are frequently less systematic or structured than those written by professional abstractors.
- He said: ‘We will be consulting fully with angling clubs, water abstractors and other waterway users.’
- There are abstractors, including Meridian Energy, that would divert water to another catchment or into storage, and there are those who value the water in-stream.

Origin

Middle English: from Latin abstractus, literally 'drawn away', past participle of abstrahere, from ab- 'from' + trahere 'draw off'.

The Latin source of abstract, meant literally ‘drawn away’ and is from abstrahere, from the elements ab- ‘from’ and trahere ‘draw off’. The use in art dates from the mid 19th century. Trahere is found in many English words including: attract (Late Middle English) with ad ‘to’; portrait (mid 16th century), something drawn; protract (mid 16th century) with pro ‘out’; retract (Late Middle English) and retreat (Late Middle English) both drawing back; and words listed at train.

Rhymes

abreact, act, attract, bract, compact, contract, counteract, diffract, enact, exact, extract, fact, humpbacked, impact, interact, matter-of-fact, pact, protract, redact, refract, retroact, subcontract, subtract, tact, tract, transact, unbacked, underact, untracked

Definition of abstract in US English:

abstract

adjectiveˈabˌstrakt

1Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.
abstract concepts such as love or beauty
Example sentencesExamples
- In the high Arctic, climate change isn't an abstract concept
- One of the reasons is undoubtedly that stories bring ideas to life and help readers see abstract concepts in action.
- The colours each had several meanings, some of which were abstract ideas, some concrete as in the cattle and sheep example.
- It will be easier at this time to put abstract ideas into concrete form.
- Freedom of the press is not an abstract concept, freedom of the press has a purpose: to deliver the truth.
- Making haiku is a most effective way of exploring ways of expressing abstract concepts in concrete language, of pulling out the essence of a feeling and making it into something unique.
- I urge that the general public be made more aware of this very useful result of a very abstract physical theory.
- In that profession you start with a blank sheet of paper and a concept or abstract idea.
- It means a combination of things, both abstract and physical.
- Numbers in early historical times were thought of much more concretely than the abstract concepts which are our numbers today.
- This is a laudable but somewhat abstract concept.
- Thus, ‘the Chinese are always forced by the very nature of the language to resort to concrete expression for abstract concepts’.
- Poetry allows us to examine science in a way that purely scientific discourse cannot by analogizing abstract concepts into concrete forms.
- Even at the time, it was very obvious to me that these were not people who were interested in ideas or ethereal, abstract notions of human liberty.
- What is relevant in the economic realm is not an abstract concept or formula - no matter how beautiful - but its physical embodiment.
- Fabre explains that his metaphors are simultaneously real and illusory, physical and abstract, living and dead.
- Or is it an abstract place existing inside people's minds?
- The function of a metaphor is to explain one thing in terms of another thing - typically, to clarify an abstract concept by comparing it to something concrete.
- Wilber has so far failed to attract the large mainstream audience that his ideas deserve - in part because his writing is so often abstract and theoretical.
- One conclusion that one might be tempted to draw from this is that mathematical truths cannot, after all, imply the existence of specific abstract objects of any kind.
- Like Borges, his writing examines the consequences of abstract theories in the physical world.
Synonyms
theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic
1. 1.1 Dealing with ideas rather than events.
  the novel was too abstract and esoteric to sustain much attention
  Example sentencesExamples
  Video has a place on blogs, especially in reporting about tsunamis and other events that are dramatic and not abstract.
  Looking at German games, all of them have a strong abstract base to them.
  Neither has Lane done himself any favours by dispensing with a chronological narrative in favour of themed chapters with abstract titles such as Complicity and Betrayal.
  I found it abstract and rather unmoving, more of an idea for a drama than a compelling drama itself.
  The choreography is abstract and seemed very difficult - it demands strong technique and exactness.
  Certainly, if last night's showing was anything to go by, his work was somewhat abstract and obscure, and obviously an acquired taste.
  Potokar's poetry seems rather abstract, at times cryptic, but at the same time palpable and relentless in its attempt to fight despair and solitude.
  They are very abstract, based on mythical and dreamy themes.
  These stories are not abstract or theoretical and they communicate a local opinion directly.
  Lyrics are abstract and often inscrutable, but powerful images sometime fight through the verbal and instrumental haze.
  It's about the right image going with the right story in the right direction, rather than it being abstract.
  Her comments in interviews and at readings, likewise, reveal the startling literalness of her apparently abstract, difficult poems.
  The pace is languid and events too abstract to be a children's movie, yet corny stunts alienate mature viewers.
  But the same critics applauded our next production, ‘Search for my Tongue’, which was abstract and based on the loss of identity.
  The other dream was a lot more abstract and involved.
  At the moment, for many, it's just too abstract and theoretical.
  Here's a big goof that new web writers frequently make: writing copy that's too abstract, too esoteric, too philosophical.
  Some people feel modern dance is difficult to follow, somewhat abstract or esoteric.
  This debate may appear rather abstract right now.
  After all, math is so abstract that it's hard to communicate ideas to other mathematicians.
  Synonyms
  abstruse, obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied, recondite, difficult, hard, puzzling, perplexing, enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, delphic
2. 1.2 Not based on a particular instance; theoretical.
  we have been discussing the problem in a very abstract manner
  Example sentencesExamples
  While the research work is highly abstract and theoretical, it has practical applications in computer science, Goins notes.
  For a longer piece of work, you would have the luxury to break down the symbols further and make those symbols interact in a more abstract manner, which will boost the power of the sigil.
  Not some theoretical, abstract cost, but a real cost.
  Second, this shaky notion was based on a highly abstract and contentious branch of physics known as string theory.
  Once we get a hint we are capable of making the original more abstract and less concrete, of extending a concrete and singular concept into more abstract spheres.
  But equally, he claimed that he was capable of dissociating himself from his physical disorders only through abstract thought.
  It came through concrete example and abstract argument.
  Courts are not supposed to decide questions which are merely moot, theoretical, abstract or hypothetical.
  So a culture based on abstract reasoning, or on various metaphysical precepts, may itself be simply a product of evolutionary change.
  Modem science, no matter how theoretical, speculative and abstract, strives finally for empirical evidence to test and confirm its truth claims.
  It is grotesquely, disastrously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation.
  They mean something more abstract - a philosophical schema for governing, which often amounts to a slogan to describe one's ideology.
  My political culture is empirical rather than abstract.
  We respond to dangers that our ancestors equipped us to understand, like fire and fangs and claws, more readily than we respond to threats based on abstract reasoning.
  There, I can discuss things from my past in an abstract manner, without directly pointing fingers.
  The question of Being, far from being too abstract or theoretical an issue, will prove to be important for understanding exile.
  But these laws and theorems are not just abstract mathematics.
  Those were theoretical or abstract possibilities not applying to this case.
  I can understand why she has that impression; many gay-marriage advocates have talked about gay marriage in these rather loose and abstract terms.
  The reason for believing that it is a largely abstract and theoretical issue is that the Court of Appeal judgments implied strongly that that was so.
  Synonyms
  theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic
3. 1.3 (of a word, especially a noun) denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object.
  abstract words like truth or equality
  Example sentencesExamples
  Verbs and adjectives are more abstract, and so are more difficult concepts for children's minds to grasp.
  Sitor, according to Nirwan, often achieves this by using abstract nouns.
  Liberty is a ponderous and not-to-be-used-lightly abstract noun.
  The more the state expands in this way, the more success it will enjoy in the only one of its wars on abstract nouns it wages unremittingly - the War on Capital.
  There is nothing wrong in principle in waging war on an abstract noun; the British navy successfully waged a war on slavery, by which they meant a war on slavers.
  Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract.
  How, if it's a category mistake to think that you can fight a war against it, do you organise an international campaign against an abstract noun?
  This is, strangely enough, an unusual example of an abstract noun being masculine in Hebrew - most of them are feminine.
  But it is Brutus who is the most instantly recognisable modern figure in his use of abstract nouns to justify political ends.
  As your Honours have seen the substantive provision of the Act is one which uses the abstract noun.
  The former is an abstract noun, the latter is a person.
  And although ubuntu can be grammatically classified as an abstract noun, it is often employed in relational contexts.
  Today in Mr. Danton's class, I got hit with a ruler again for saying love was a concrete noun and not an abstract one.
  There will be confusion if we continue to use the word ‘morality’ because it is an abstract noun.
  All the stories were written specifically for this collection - all have abstract nouns as titles and all are thematically linked.
  But terror is an abstract noun, not a country as our Constitution pickily insists for a war.
  The most difficult task for the mothers was to explain the concept of abstract nouns and mimetic words in Korean.
  Perspicacity is an abstract noun describing a certain capacity of a certain capability.
  You cannot have a war on an abstract noun. ‘Terrorism’ is that.
  One does not mind the ending, but one notices that when Taylor strings together abstract nouns, he is at his least compelling.
2Relating to abstract art.
abstract pictures that look like commercial color charts
Example sentencesExamples
- It's a beautiful work of abstract colour and texture, of contrasting dark and light.
- Rothko stresses that the contrast between abstract and representational painting is overdrawn, that all art has subject matter.
- Boxer is perhaps best known for richly textured abstract canvases, championed by critic Clement Greenberg.
- The landscape background of Elizabeth's portrait in particular is remarkably abstract, using strong colour and thick impasto.
- She is represented by two unprepossessing abstract heads rendered in polychrome clay.
- Her work is abstract, using geometrical shapes subtly arranged and typically painted in soft colours.
- Both legs and abstract shapes contribute to an almost painterly overall compositional effect.
- These two shows, a few months apart, displayed the tactile and abstract effects she wrings from such small-scale marks.
- His later style of the 1940s is more abstract and colour becomes the most important factor.
- They resemble cone-like wall sconces, and the colorful abstract shapes covering their surfaces appear to glow like stained glass windows.
- In the '50s, he made heavily textured abstract paintings using crumpled mulberry paper and globs of oil paint.
- The layers of abstract colour in her current work recalls another German painter, Gerhard Richter.
- Several artists claimed to be the first to paint an abstract picture, rather as early photographers had wrangled over who had invented the camera.
- This sort of abstract illusionism brings to mind certain early canvases by Bridget Riley.
- For these abstract artists, the external world is mediated by internal feelings.
- Goodwin now works in both representational and abstract modes.
- I remember how Robert Motherwell didn't like the term abstract expressionism and preferred abstract automatism.
- The lower half of the artwork consists of dark splotches and torn-paper abstract effects.
- Their plainly representational knotty, bark-covered surface contrasts with the immaterial, abstract shapes of the molding.
- Her use of abstract effects in the service of representation is striking and makes her art complex.
Synonyms
non-representational, non-realistic, non-pictorial, symbolic, impressionistic

verbæbˈstræktabˈstrakt

[with object]

1Consider (something) theoretically or separately from something else.
to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism
no object he cannot form a general notion by abstracting from particulars
Example sentencesExamples
- This becomes abstracted from the original idea, possibly to become unrecognizable.
- Surveys pick out contentious conclusions on divine unity and Trinity and Incarnation and other topoi, abstracted from the original warp and weft, as though the latter were mere packaging.
- From the mathematician's point of view, the advantage in abstracting a point from its diverse incarnations lies in the resulting generality.
- It has been said, for example, that Aquinas is not really interested in the Trinity and the incarnation, that he is chiefly concerned to promote a notion of God abstracted from orthodox Christian teaching.
- Succeeds because it's stylistically brilliant, and because it hooks the experience of being black in America into universal human experiences of rage and alienation without ever abstracting or moving away from the particulars of race.
- These are two senses in which mathematics is an abstract subject: it abstracts the important features from a problem and it deals with objects that are not concrete and tangible.
- It shouldn't be abstracted from the debate about Europe's crisis.
- By relating what Gandhi said to what he did and by examining instances of satyagraha led by others, this book abstracts from the Indian experiments those essential elements that constitute the Gandhian technique.
- Reason however in the Edinburgh Enlightenment was still prior to experience: the people are a body ‘out there’; visible, and abstracted from action.
- The flaw in that approach, in our submission, is that it tends to dismember the definition of ‘refugee’ in Article 1A and then abstracts a particular element from its context and seeks to say that the Tribunal must deal with that element.
- But, while Elkins writes good staccato dialogue, he abstracts his characters from society.
- You can know when a lake will freeze or a pot will boil by abstracting the big picture from all the little details.
- It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation.
- The soul forms in itself likenesses of things inasmuch as, through the light of agent intellect, forms abstracted from sensible objects are made actually intelligible, so as to be received in the possible intellect.
2Extract or remove (something)
applications to abstract more water from streams
Example sentencesExamples
- In retrospect this appears so, but we have to remember that he abstracted his axioms from observation of the real world.
- A potential toxic bloom has been found on the lake from which drinking water supplies for much of the county, including the towns of Killarney and Tralee and surrounding countryside, are abstracted.
- The water has not been ‘predrunk’; it is not abstracted from a river and is as good as the best water you could find anywhere, even bottled.
- Not only is the self unable to bestow form from lived life, but also the objects themselves cannot receive it until they are abstracted from their lived-life utility.
- The point is this - we cannot abstract ideas from the historical epoch in which they appeared.
- The most egregious of these is the tendency, exemplified by Norm and Omar, to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question.
- Thus, once mixes are abstracted from their interpersonal context and reified within a commercial context, they lose much of their meaning.
- The County Council has contacted all group schemes abstracting from Lough Arrow in relation to their presence.
- But I take comfort in our inability to delineate the ‘entire picture’ - at best we can abstract a stable whole from the flow of its parts, and that can never be ‘true’.
- If we abstract the technical from its social context and cultural foundations, technology appears to develop outside of society, following a trajectory of its own making.
- I knew that I needed to abstract what I wanted from the general confusion and the disorder of the scene.
- What makes the humanities (separate from the arts) important is that they take the areas where we have insufficient data and try to abstract useful principles from it.
- If one wanted to abstract a general rule from the affair it might well be ‘to make a building look effeminate, trashy and like something out of Disneyworld, be sure to add banded pink stripes’.
- Greene was a poet, in the true sense of the word, and it is misleading and dangerous to abstract theological concepts from the work of a poet (a good poet), or from the drama of a concrete life.
- Five of the lengthy series of lithographed modeles that Goupil aimed primarily at aspiring artists included motifs, mostly head studies, abstracted from Delaroche paintings.
- This intermediate acts as a base to abstract protons from the Zn-H 2 O to produce the nucleophilic Zn-OH - species.
- And, even though Patrick Mason's production is presented by Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Company, I question his decision to abstract the play from its Irish setting with its echoes of the Ulysses Night-town sequence.
- When devising a model, one tries to ignore as much as possible about the phenomenon under consideration, abstracting from it only those features that are essential to understanding its behaviour.
- Potato producers who abstract water from Pembrokeshire's rivers and streams could have their licences revoked by new European legislation.
- The primary student concerns with Module 6, as with Module 4 and Module 5, were the time needed to complete the module and the frustration encountered in abstracting the necessary information from some of the computer systems.
Synonyms
extract, pump, draw, draw off, tap, suck, withdraw, remove, take away, take out
1. 2.1 Used euphemistically to say that someone has stolen something.
  his pockets contained all he had been able to abstract from the apartment
  Example sentencesExamples
  He was sentenced to six years for the production of cannabis and four years for abstracting electricity.
  Synonyms
  purloin, thieve, take, take for oneself, help oneself to, loot, pilfer, abscond with, run off with, appropriate, carry off, shoplift
2. 2.2abstract oneself Withdraw.
  as our relationship deepened you seemed to abstract yourself
  Example sentencesExamples
  Rose found it hard to abstract herself from the lives of these women but she knew that she had to make that distance in order to tell their story without preaching her anger.
  One thing suggested here is that only when you are able to abstract yourself, to look at yourself as if at a distance, as if you were mourning yourself, can you recognize yourself in a way that allows you to remember that you are alive at all.
  I removed my ‘About’ page and I took a conscious decision to abstract myself (though of course I'm not naïve enough to think that you won't find my name if you really want to).
  Bunting even botches an attempt by his wife to reconcile, abstracting himself from the romance of the moment in pursuit of a dry, theoretical point.
  It's melancholic, but never chilly in the way that much electronica can be and doesn't ever abstract itself out of existence.
  It assumes humans can abstract themselves from reality and go romping through history looking for the all-powerful distant cause that will explain each and every aspect of our current situation.
  Indeed, its dramatic argument is that such a personality either abstracts itself out of existence or falls into contradiction and self-destructs.
  Even Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century decided that the mind must function primarily as intellect, abstracting itself from presence, to focus upon an ‘other’ that is external- ‘out there,’ whether that be called nature or God.
  So it's always the moment when I'm stuck in reality - I have to abstract myself from it.
  She abstracted herself from her inconvenient desire; she set herself at a distance from it and inspected it, as if it were a fungus of the spirit, asserting itself without permission.
  Synonyms
  leave, go, go away, go off, take one's leave, take oneself off, withdraw, absent oneself, say one's goodbyes, quit, make an exit, exit, break camp, decamp, retreat, beat a retreat, retire
3Make a written summary of (an article or book)
staff who index and abstract material for an online database
Example sentencesExamples
- Costs were figured from a health service perspective by abstracting data from primary care case records.
- Because ventilator data are not routinely abstracted into administrative data sets, community-based, longitudinal studies of changes in ALI therapy are not available.
- Final data were abstracted directly from published articles or estimated from descriptive statistics presented in the articles.
- As we abstracted data directly from original trial reports we minimised the effects of missing data and errors in transcription.
- We abstracted all prescriptions written by the doctor for the treatment of schizophrenia and diabetes between the start of the study period and the index date.
- Data were abstracted from each study and summarized.
- It is abstracted and indexed in a wide array of major social science sources (as printed inside the front cover) but these are less commonly used by the biological sciences.
- This is the form in which the European Court abstracted the relevant part of Article 6 in paragraph of its decision.
- The microfiche are abstracted, indexed, and published in a bimonthly periodical titled Declassified Documents Catalog.
- Final data were abstracted directly from the publications or estimated from data tabulations in the articles.
- Summarizing (also called abstracting or generalizing) occurs when a student produces a short statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme.
- Conversely, the same volunteer scholar (noted by his initials at the end of the record) abstracted another article more thoroughly.
- We thank Michelle Grondin for her help in retrieving articles and abstracting data and Nancy Cleary for her administrative assistance.
- Our article was critically reviewed and abstracted by York University at the request of the British
Synonyms
summarize, write a summary of, precis, abridge, condense, compress, shorten, cut down, abbreviate, synopsize

nounˈæbˌstræktˈabˌstrakt

1A summary of the contents of a book, article, or formal speech.
an abstract of his inaugural address
Example sentencesExamples
- We reviewed abstracts and selected relevant articles.
- Content that we intend keeping free throughout this period includes abstracts of articles, rapid responses, and the Editor's Choice column.
- They spent many hours searching in commercial databases, looking for abstracts and full-text articles.
- Dr. De Luca has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over 200 abstracts, a book, and holds 12 patents.
- An abstract of this article has been published.
- We categorized the articles using the abstracts, and, when necessary, we asked the authors to classify their work correctly.
- I found numerous abstracts and articles that contain good wound care as part of a general recommendation to practitioners, usually in the conclusion of the document.
- Furthermore, while abstracts of novel drug types were more likely to be presented at the meeting, they were no less likely than abstracts on non-novel drugs to be published.
- Today we are beginning to publish abstracts of speeches made at the conference.
- The dissertation title should appear on all five abstracts, although only one should identify the author and provide a current mailing address and daytime telephone number.
- Click on the ‘enlarge image’ link to access a brief explanation and a link to the abstract for that article.
- Some of the non-English articles provided an English abstract, while others did not.
- Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword.
- The present review includes a few large and several small trials published as abstracts or full articles in many journals.
- Two independent reviewers selected the relevant abstracts and articles.
- In my view, it is first necessary to remove all abstracts, conference talks, proceedings, and other unrefereed publications from the listing.
- Journal articles usually have abstracts, so you can draw on these for guidance on how to approach this task.
- In the meantime, many journals provide at their Web sites at least a limited listing of tables of contents of their most recent issues, sometimes with abstracts and occasional articles.
- Over the intervening years, over 20 research papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or as research abstracts.
- He has published over 60 articles, book chapters and abstracts.
Synonyms
summary, synopsis, precis, résumé, outline, recapitulation, abridgement, condensation, digest, summation
2An abstract work of art.
a big unframed abstract
Example sentencesExamples
- However, the customer wandered away to look at an abstract in big, bold colors.
- Quinn, Rolando and Campbell report that contemporary abstracts and landscapes are their biggest sellers.
- Equally, every painting, however realistic, is an abstract.
- ‘If she were a painting she'd have to be an abstract by Picasso because she has so many faces,’ he said.
- She tried working in a different, much looser style and even painted abstracts, but her paintings in this new vein were coolly received and after 1962 she did not exhibit her work.
- A good way to start is with the gallery devoted to his works on paper, which, aside from several highly covetable two-dimensional abstracts, includes dozens of sketches for major projects.
- Ranging from classic black and white shots featuring line and form to intriguing abstracts in colour, the exhibition charts Rob's photographic journey during this period.
- The choice of painting marked a departure from the norm for Finnegan; up till then landscapes and abstracts were the only paintings in her home.
- It was a figurative abstract of Pare Argile holding his son as a newly born baby.
- It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings.
- The works include landscapes, still lifes, figuratives, abstracts and pastels, by approximately 75 artists.
- Some were boring portraits but the abstracts caught my gaze.
- Working in acrylics, inks, and soft pastels her paintings range from tender abstracts depicting human emotions to more powerful and emotive images full of eastern promise and the mystical unknown.
- He was surprised when the kids were more attracted to a showcase of Smithsonian abstracts than to a display of Mickey and Minnie art.
- He has purchased a wide range of artwork, including colorful, cartoonish prints and wild abstracts framed in austere black mouldings.
- Logically, they are abstracts and yet they seem to be pictures of something concrete, something in, perhaps, a third realm which is neither our mind nor the world.
- The show consisted of figurative paintings, landscapes and abstracts.
- Paint-Or-Die manages to represent a wide gamut of modern painting styles: colour-field painting, abstracts, figurative and representational styles are all here.
- He is now experimenting with big abstracts in oils.
- Gradually, the artist transited to pure abstracts, investing the image of nature with colours.
3the abstractThat which is abstract; the theoretical consideration of something.
the abstract must be made concrete by examples
Example sentencesExamples
- Chagall's public writings did not tend toward the abstract or theoretical.

Phrases

in the abstract

In a general way; without reference to specific instances.
there's a fine line between promoting US business interests in the abstract and promoting specific companies
Example sentencesExamples
- Corruption is generally held to be a vice, and viewed in the abstract, it is.
- And that's certainly a good idea, at least in the abstract and as a general matter.
- To solve a problem, you're therefore never very interested in Hindu law in the abstract.
- Charter issues must be decided in the factual context before the court and not in the abstract or on hypothetical facts.
- And if it isn't going to hurt any specific marriage, it isn't going to hurt marriage in the abstract.
- I have a strong suspicion that generals are always better in the abstract than in reality.
- Your paper is in favour of home rule in the abstract but never, it seems in the actual practice.
- Still, people seem to be more fond of free speech in the abstract than in specific instances.
- Mentoring is not effective or ineffective in the abstract, but has specific outcomes in specific circumstances.
- We do not say that there is anything about calling up special reasons, generally, in the abstract, as being a vice in legislation.
- Such ideals cannot be lived in the abstract, they must be performed.
Synonyms
in principle, on paper, in the abstract, all things being equal, in an ideal world

Origin

Middle English: from Latin abstractus, literally ‘drawn away’, past participle of abstrahere, from ab- ‘from’ + trahere ‘draw off’.

单词	abstract
释义	Definition of abstract in English: abstract adjective ˈabstrakt 1Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence. abstract concepts such as love or beauty Example sentencesExamples It means a combination of things, both abstract and physical. Freedom of the press is not an abstract concept, freedom of the press has a purpose: to deliver the truth. This is a laudable but somewhat abstract concept. Making haiku is a most effective way of exploring ways of expressing abstract concepts in concrete language, of pulling out the essence of a feeling and making it into something unique. What is relevant in the economic realm is not an abstract concept or formula - no matter how beautiful - but its physical embodiment. In that profession you start with a blank sheet of paper and a concept or abstract idea. One conclusion that one might be tempted to draw from this is that mathematical truths cannot, after all, imply the existence of specific abstract objects of any kind. In the high Arctic, climate change isn't an abstract concept Or is it an abstract place existing inside people's minds? Wilber has so far failed to attract the large mainstream audience that his ideas deserve - in part because his writing is so often abstract and theoretical. The function of a metaphor is to explain one thing in terms of another thing - typically, to clarify an abstract concept by comparing it to something concrete. Even at the time, it was very obvious to me that these were not people who were interested in ideas or ethereal, abstract notions of human liberty. Fabre explains that his metaphors are simultaneously real and illusory, physical and abstract, living and dead. Numbers in early historical times were thought of much more concretely than the abstract concepts which are our numbers today. The colours each had several meanings, some of which were abstract ideas, some concrete as in the cattle and sheep example. Like Borges, his writing examines the consequences of abstract theories in the physical world. Thus, ‘the Chinese are always forced by the very nature of the language to resort to concrete expression for abstract concepts’. It will be easier at this time to put abstract ideas into concrete form. One of the reasons is undoubtedly that stories bring ideas to life and help readers see abstract concepts in action. Poetry allows us to examine science in a way that purely scientific discourse cannot by analogizing abstract concepts into concrete forms. I urge that the general public be made more aware of this very useful result of a very abstract physical theory. Synonyms theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic hypothetical, speculative, conjectural, conjectured, suppositional, putative rare suppositious, suppositive, ideational 1.1 Dealing with ideas rather than events. the novel was too abstract and esoteric to sustain much attention Example sentencesExamples The pace is languid and events too abstract to be a children's movie, yet corny stunts alienate mature viewers. Her comments in interviews and at readings, likewise, reveal the startling literalness of her apparently abstract, difficult poems. The choreography is abstract and seemed very difficult - it demands strong technique and exactness. Here's a big goof that new web writers frequently make: writing copy that's too abstract, too esoteric, too philosophical. The other dream was a lot more abstract and involved. Looking at German games, all of them have a strong abstract base to them. Neither has Lane done himself any favours by dispensing with a chronological narrative in favour of themed chapters with abstract titles such as Complicity and Betrayal. Potokar's poetry seems rather abstract, at times cryptic, but at the same time palpable and relentless in its attempt to fight despair and solitude. Some people feel modern dance is difficult to follow, somewhat abstract or esoteric. Certainly, if last night's showing was anything to go by, his work was somewhat abstract and obscure, and obviously an acquired taste. These stories are not abstract or theoretical and they communicate a local opinion directly. I found it abstract and rather unmoving, more of an idea for a drama than a compelling drama itself. This debate may appear rather abstract right now. But the same critics applauded our next production, ‘Search for my Tongue’, which was abstract and based on the loss of identity. After all, math is so abstract that it's hard to communicate ideas to other mathematicians. At the moment, for many, it's just too abstract and theoretical. Lyrics are abstract and often inscrutable, but powerful images sometime fight through the verbal and instrumental haze. Video has a place on blogs, especially in reporting about tsunamis and other events that are dramatic and not abstract. It's about the right image going with the right story in the right direction, rather than it being abstract. They are very abstract, based on mythical and dreamy themes. Synonyms abstruse, obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied, recondite, difficult, hard, puzzling, perplexing, enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, delphic 1.2 Not based on a particular instance; theoretical. we have been discussing the problem in a very abstract manner Example sentencesExamples The reason for believing that it is a largely abstract and theoretical issue is that the Court of Appeal judgments implied strongly that that was so. It came through concrete example and abstract argument. But equally, he claimed that he was capable of dissociating himself from his physical disorders only through abstract thought. So a culture based on abstract reasoning, or on various metaphysical precepts, may itself be simply a product of evolutionary change. The question of Being, far from being too abstract or theoretical an issue, will prove to be important for understanding exile. I can understand why she has that impression; many gay-marriage advocates have talked about gay marriage in these rather loose and abstract terms. It is grotesquely, disastrously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation. Not some theoretical, abstract cost, but a real cost. For a longer piece of work, you would have the luxury to break down the symbols further and make those symbols interact in a more abstract manner, which will boost the power of the sigil. But these laws and theorems are not just abstract mathematics. Modem science, no matter how theoretical, speculative and abstract, strives finally for empirical evidence to test and confirm its truth claims. Courts are not supposed to decide questions which are merely moot, theoretical, abstract or hypothetical. While the research work is highly abstract and theoretical, it has practical applications in computer science, Goins notes. We respond to dangers that our ancestors equipped us to understand, like fire and fangs and claws, more readily than we respond to threats based on abstract reasoning. Second, this shaky notion was based on a highly abstract and contentious branch of physics known as string theory. They mean something more abstract - a philosophical schema for governing, which often amounts to a slogan to describe one's ideology. Those were theoretical or abstract possibilities not applying to this case. There, I can discuss things from my past in an abstract manner, without directly pointing fingers. My political culture is empirical rather than abstract. Once we get a hint we are capable of making the original more abstract and less concrete, of extending a concrete and singular concept into more abstract spheres. Synonyms theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic 1.3 (of a noun) denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object. Example sentencesExamples One does not mind the ending, but one notices that when Taylor strings together abstract nouns, he is at his least compelling. As your Honours have seen the substantive provision of the Act is one which uses the abstract noun. How, if it's a category mistake to think that you can fight a war against it, do you organise an international campaign against an abstract noun? The former is an abstract noun, the latter is a person. You cannot have a war on an abstract noun. ‘Terrorism’ is that. There will be confusion if we continue to use the word ‘morality’ because it is an abstract noun. Verbs and adjectives are more abstract, and so are more difficult concepts for children's minds to grasp. All the stories were written specifically for this collection - all have abstract nouns as titles and all are thematically linked. Liberty is a ponderous and not-to-be-used-lightly abstract noun. And although ubuntu can be grammatically classified as an abstract noun, it is often employed in relational contexts. Perspicacity is an abstract noun describing a certain capacity of a certain capability. Sitor, according to Nirwan, often achieves this by using abstract nouns. The most difficult task for the mothers was to explain the concept of abstract nouns and mimetic words in Korean. The more the state expands in this way, the more success it will enjoy in the only one of its wars on abstract nouns it wages unremittingly - the War on Capital. Today in Mr. Danton's class, I got hit with a ruler again for saying love was a concrete noun and not an abstract one. There is nothing wrong in principle in waging war on an abstract noun; the British navy successfully waged a war on slavery, by which they meant a war on slavers. Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract. This is, strangely enough, an unusual example of an abstract noun being masculine in Hebrew - most of them are feminine. But terror is an abstract noun, not a country as our Constitution pickily insists for a war. But it is Brutus who is the most instantly recognisable modern figure in his use of abstract nouns to justify political ends. 2Relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures. abstract pictures Example sentencesExamples Rothko stresses that the contrast between abstract and representational painting is overdrawn, that all art has subject matter. It's a beautiful work of abstract colour and texture, of contrasting dark and light. His later style of the 1940s is more abstract and colour becomes the most important factor. The landscape background of Elizabeth's portrait in particular is remarkably abstract, using strong colour and thick impasto. In the '50s, he made heavily textured abstract paintings using crumpled mulberry paper and globs of oil paint. Goodwin now works in both representational and abstract modes. The layers of abstract colour in her current work recalls another German painter, Gerhard Richter. Boxer is perhaps best known for richly textured abstract canvases, championed by critic Clement Greenberg. This sort of abstract illusionism brings to mind certain early canvases by Bridget Riley. For these abstract artists, the external world is mediated by internal feelings. Their plainly representational knotty, bark-covered surface contrasts with the immaterial, abstract shapes of the molding. Several artists claimed to be the first to paint an abstract picture, rather as early photographers had wrangled over who had invented the camera. Her work is abstract, using geometrical shapes subtly arranged and typically painted in soft colours. I remember how Robert Motherwell didn't like the term abstract expressionism and preferred abstract automatism. These two shows, a few months apart, displayed the tactile and abstract effects she wrings from such small-scale marks. She is represented by two unprepossessing abstract heads rendered in polychrome clay. Both legs and abstract shapes contribute to an almost painterly overall compositional effect. They resemble cone-like wall sconces, and the colorful abstract shapes covering their surfaces appear to glow like stained glass windows. The lower half of the artwork consists of dark splotches and torn-paper abstract effects. Her use of abstract effects in the service of representation is striking and makes her art complex. Synonyms non-representational, non-realistic, non-pictorial, symbolic, impressionistic verb əbˈstraktæbˈstrækt [with object] 1abstract something fromConsider something theoretically or separately from (something else) to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism Example sentencesExamples You can know when a lake will freeze or a pot will boil by abstracting the big picture from all the little details. Reason however in the Edinburgh Enlightenment was still prior to experience: the people are a body ‘out there’; visible, and abstracted from action. These are two senses in which mathematics is an abstract subject: it abstracts the important features from a problem and it deals with objects that are not concrete and tangible. Succeeds because it's stylistically brilliant, and because it hooks the experience of being black in America into universal human experiences of rage and alienation without ever abstracting or moving away from the particulars of race. It has been said, for example, that Aquinas is not really interested in the Trinity and the incarnation, that he is chiefly concerned to promote a notion of God abstracted from orthodox Christian teaching. But, while Elkins writes good staccato dialogue, he abstracts his characters from society. From the mathematician's point of view, the advantage in abstracting a point from its diverse incarnations lies in the resulting generality. This becomes abstracted from the original idea, possibly to become unrecognizable. By relating what Gandhi said to what he did and by examining instances of satyagraha led by others, this book abstracts from the Indian experiments those essential elements that constitute the Gandhian technique. The flaw in that approach, in our submission, is that it tends to dismember the definition of ‘refugee’ in Article 1A and then abstracts a particular element from its context and seeks to say that the Tribunal must deal with that element. Surveys pick out contentious conclusions on divine unity and Trinity and Incarnation and other topoi, abstracted from the original warp and weft, as though the latter were mere packaging. The soul forms in itself likenesses of things inasmuch as, through the light of agent intellect, forms abstracted from sensible objects are made actually intelligible, so as to be received in the possible intellect. It shouldn't be abstracted from the debate about Europe's crisis. It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation. 2usually abstract something fromExtract or remove (something) applications to abstract more water from streams Example sentencesExamples Not only is the self unable to bestow form from lived life, but also the objects themselves cannot receive it until they are abstracted from their lived-life utility. The primary student concerns with Module 6, as with Module 4 and Module 5, were the time needed to complete the module and the frustration encountered in abstracting the necessary information from some of the computer systems. Greene was a poet, in the true sense of the word, and it is misleading and dangerous to abstract theological concepts from the work of a poet (a good poet), or from the drama of a concrete life. The water has not been ‘predrunk’; it is not abstracted from a river and is as good as the best water you could find anywhere, even bottled. Potato producers who abstract water from Pembrokeshire's rivers and streams could have their licences revoked by new European legislation. When devising a model, one tries to ignore as much as possible about the phenomenon under consideration, abstracting from it only those features that are essential to understanding its behaviour. But I take comfort in our inability to delineate the ‘entire picture’ - at best we can abstract a stable whole from the flow of its parts, and that can never be ‘true’. A potential toxic bloom has been found on the lake from which drinking water supplies for much of the county, including the towns of Killarney and Tralee and surrounding countryside, are abstracted. The point is this - we cannot abstract ideas from the historical epoch in which they appeared. Five of the lengthy series of lithographed modeles that Goupil aimed primarily at aspiring artists included motifs, mostly head studies, abstracted from Delaroche paintings. And, even though Patrick Mason's production is presented by Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Company, I question his decision to abstract the play from its Irish setting with its echoes of the Ulysses Night-town sequence. The most egregious of these is the tendency, exemplified by Norm and Omar, to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question. What makes the humanities (separate from the arts) important is that they take the areas where we have insufficient data and try to abstract useful principles from it. This intermediate acts as a base to abstract protons from the Zn-H 2 O to produce the nucleophilic Zn-OH - species. In retrospect this appears so, but we have to remember that he abstracted his axioms from observation of the real world. If we abstract the technical from its social context and cultural foundations, technology appears to develop outside of society, following a trajectory of its own making. I knew that I needed to abstract what I wanted from the general confusion and the disorder of the scene. The County Council has contacted all group schemes abstracting from Lough Arrow in relation to their presence. Thus, once mixes are abstracted from their interpersonal context and reified within a commercial context, they lose much of their meaning. If one wanted to abstract a general rule from the affair it might well be ‘to make a building look effeminate, trashy and like something out of Disneyworld, be sure to add banded pink stripes’. Synonyms extract, pump, draw (off), tap, suck, withdraw, remove, take out/away separate, detach, isolate, dissociate 2.1 Used euphemistically to indicate that someone has stolen something. his pockets contained all he had been able to abstract from the flat Example sentencesExamples He was sentenced to six years for the production of cannabis and four years for abstracting electricity. Synonyms purloin, thieve, take, take for oneself, help oneself to, loot, pilfer, abscond with, run off with, appropriate, carry off, shoplift 2.2abstract oneself Withdraw. as our relationship deepened you seemed to abstract yourself Example sentencesExamples Bunting even botches an attempt by his wife to reconcile, abstracting himself from the romance of the moment in pursuit of a dry, theoretical point. It assumes humans can abstract themselves from reality and go romping through history looking for the all-powerful distant cause that will explain each and every aspect of our current situation. Rose found it hard to abstract herself from the lives of these women but she knew that she had to make that distance in order to tell their story without preaching her anger. One thing suggested here is that only when you are able to abstract yourself, to look at yourself as if at a distance, as if you were mourning yourself, can you recognize yourself in a way that allows you to remember that you are alive at all. I removed my ‘About’ page and I took a conscious decision to abstract myself (though of course I'm not naïve enough to think that you won't find my name if you really want to). She abstracted herself from her inconvenient desire; she set herself at a distance from it and inspected it, as if it were a fungus of the spirit, asserting itself without permission. So it's always the moment when I'm stuck in reality - I have to abstract myself from it. Even Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century decided that the mind must function primarily as intellect, abstracting itself from presence, to focus upon an ‘other’ that is external- ‘out there,’ whether that be called nature or God. It's melancholic, but never chilly in the way that much electronica can be and doesn't ever abstract itself out of existence. Indeed, its dramatic argument is that such a personality either abstracts itself out of existence or falls into contradiction and self-destructs. Synonyms leave, go, go away, go off, take one's leave, take oneself off, withdraw, absent oneself, say one's goodbyes, quit, make an exit, exit, break camp, decamp, retreat, beat a retreat, retire 3Make a written summary of (an article or book) staff who abstract material for an online database Example sentencesExamples Final data were abstracted directly from published articles or estimated from descriptive statistics presented in the articles. The microfiche are abstracted, indexed, and published in a bimonthly periodical titled Declassified Documents Catalog. Because ventilator data are not routinely abstracted into administrative data sets, community-based, longitudinal studies of changes in ALI therapy are not available. We thank Michelle Grondin for her help in retrieving articles and abstracting data and Nancy Cleary for her administrative assistance. It is abstracted and indexed in a wide array of major social science sources (as printed inside the front cover) but these are less commonly used by the biological sciences. Costs were figured from a health service perspective by abstracting data from primary care case records. We abstracted all prescriptions written by the doctor for the treatment of schizophrenia and diabetes between the start of the study period and the index date. As we abstracted data directly from original trial reports we minimised the effects of missing data and errors in transcription. Data were abstracted from each study and summarized. Summarizing (also called abstracting or generalizing) occurs when a student produces a short statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme. Conversely, the same volunteer scholar (noted by his initials at the end of the record) abstracted another article more thoroughly. This is the form in which the European Court abstracted the relevant part of Article 6 in paragraph of its decision. Final data were abstracted directly from the publications or estimated from data tabulations in the articles. Our article was critically reviewed and abstracted by York University at the request of the British Synonyms summarize, write a summary of, precis, abridge, condense, compress, shorten, cut down, abbreviate, synopsize rare epitomize noun ˈabstraktˈæbˌstrækt 1A summary of the contents of a book, article, or speech. an abstract of her speech Example sentencesExamples Content that we intend keeping free throughout this period includes abstracts of articles, rapid responses, and the Editor's Choice column. Dr. De Luca has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over 200 abstracts, a book, and holds 12 patents. Over the intervening years, over 20 research papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or as research abstracts. Furthermore, while abstracts of novel drug types were more likely to be presented at the meeting, they were no less likely than abstracts on non-novel drugs to be published. We categorized the articles using the abstracts, and, when necessary, we asked the authors to classify their work correctly. I found numerous abstracts and articles that contain good wound care as part of a general recommendation to practitioners, usually in the conclusion of the document. Some of the non-English articles provided an English abstract, while others did not. In my view, it is first necessary to remove all abstracts, conference talks, proceedings, and other unrefereed publications from the listing. In the meantime, many journals provide at their Web sites at least a limited listing of tables of contents of their most recent issues, sometimes with abstracts and occasional articles. They spent many hours searching in commercial databases, looking for abstracts and full-text articles. Two independent reviewers selected the relevant abstracts and articles. Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword. Today we are beginning to publish abstracts of speeches made at the conference. The present review includes a few large and several small trials published as abstracts or full articles in many journals. He has published over 60 articles, book chapters and abstracts. Journal articles usually have abstracts, so you can draw on these for guidance on how to approach this task. An abstract of this article has been published. The dissertation title should appear on all five abstracts, although only one should identify the author and provide a current mailing address and daytime telephone number. Click on the ‘enlarge image’ link to access a brief explanation and a link to the abstract for that article. We reviewed abstracts and selected relevant articles. Synonyms summary, synopsis, precis, résumé, outline, recapitulation, abridgement, condensation, digest, summation French aperçu North American wrap-up archaic argument rare epitome, conspectus 2An abstract work of art. a big unframed abstract Example sentencesExamples The works include landscapes, still lifes, figuratives, abstracts and pastels, by approximately 75 artists. Logically, they are abstracts and yet they seem to be pictures of something concrete, something in, perhaps, a third realm which is neither our mind nor the world. It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings. The choice of painting marked a departure from the norm for Finnegan; up till then landscapes and abstracts were the only paintings in her home. Working in acrylics, inks, and soft pastels her paintings range from tender abstracts depicting human emotions to more powerful and emotive images full of eastern promise and the mystical unknown. Some were boring portraits but the abstracts caught my gaze. It was a figurative abstract of Pare Argile holding his son as a newly born baby. The show consisted of figurative paintings, landscapes and abstracts. Gradually, the artist transited to pure abstracts, investing the image of nature with colours. Ranging from classic black and white shots featuring line and form to intriguing abstracts in colour, the exhibition charts Rob's photographic journey during this period. ‘If she were a painting she'd have to be an abstract by Picasso because she has so many faces,’ he said. Quinn, Rolando and Campbell report that contemporary abstracts and landscapes are their biggest sellers. He is now experimenting with big abstracts in oils. He has purchased a wide range of artwork, including colorful, cartoonish prints and wild abstracts framed in austere black mouldings. However, the customer wandered away to look at an abstract in big, bold colors. A good way to start is with the gallery devoted to his works on paper, which, aside from several highly covetable two-dimensional abstracts, includes dozens of sketches for major projects. Paint-Or-Die manages to represent a wide gamut of modern painting styles: colour-field painting, abstracts, figurative and representational styles are all here. She tried working in a different, much looser style and even painted abstracts, but her paintings in this new vein were coolly received and after 1962 she did not exhibit her work. He was surprised when the kids were more attracted to a showcase of Smithsonian abstracts than to a display of Mickey and Minnie art. Equally, every painting, however realistic, is an abstract. Phrases in the abstract In a general way; without reference to specific instances. there's a fine line between promoting US business interests in the abstract and promoting specific companies Example sentencesExamples Your paper is in favour of home rule in the abstract but never, it seems in the actual practice. Mentoring is not effective or ineffective in the abstract, but has specific outcomes in specific circumstances. Still, people seem to be more fond of free speech in the abstract than in specific instances. We do not say that there is anything about calling up special reasons, generally, in the abstract, as being a vice in legislation. And that's certainly a good idea, at least in the abstract and as a general matter. Charter issues must be decided in the factual context before the court and not in the abstract or on hypothetical facts. I have a strong suspicion that generals are always better in the abstract than in reality. Corruption is generally held to be a vice, and viewed in the abstract, it is. Such ideals cannot be lived in the abstract, they must be performed. And if it isn't going to hurt any specific marriage, it isn't going to hurt marriage in the abstract. To solve a problem, you're therefore never very interested in Hindu law in the abstract. Synonyms in principle, on paper, in the abstract, all things being equal, in an ideal world Derivatives abstractly adverb ˈabstraktli More abstractly: how do you convince them that there is value in nuance and ambiguity, in seeing the world in shades of grey? Example sentencesExamples If they do, your children will have far more chance of learning to think abstractly by the end of their GCSEs, and some of them might end up at university studying science or possibly even become scientists. It takes years to learn to think hypothetically and abstractly. Many law students tend to phrase things too abstractly; this exercise aims to help them make their writing more concrete and therefore clearer and more effective. Somehow hearing abstractly about 6 million killed just does not make the same emotional connection as reading the full story of one little girl and her family. abstractor noun abˈstraktə A person who analyses or summarizes information, in particular a person whose job is to collect and maintain data or records. we require an abstractor for our new research and development centre Example sentencesExamples Even when they are, researchers must try to control for variations in quality; author-supplied abstracts, for example, are frequently less systematic or structured than those written by professional abstractors. He said: ‘We will be consulting fully with angling clubs, water abstractors and other waterway users.’ There are abstractors, including Meridian Energy, that would divert water to another catchment or into storage, and there are those who value the water in-stream. Origin Middle English: from Latin abstractus, literally 'drawn away', past participle of abstrahere, from ab- 'from' + trahere 'draw off'. The Latin source of abstract, meant literally ‘drawn away’ and is from abstrahere, from the elements ab- ‘from’ and trahere ‘draw off’. The use in art dates from the mid 19th century. Trahere is found in many English words including: attract (Late Middle English) with ad ‘to’; portrait (mid 16th century), something drawn; protract (mid 16th century) with pro ‘out’; retract (Late Middle English) and retreat (Late Middle English) both drawing back; and words listed at train. Rhymes abreact, act, attract, bract, compact, contract, counteract, diffract, enact, exact, extract, fact, humpbacked, impact, interact, matter-of-fact, pact, protract, redact, refract, retroact, subcontract, subtract, tact, tract, transact, unbacked, underact, untracked adj.1 phr. Definition of abstract in US English: abstract adjectiveˈabˌstrakt 1Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence. abstract concepts such as love or beauty Example sentencesExamples In the high Arctic, climate change isn't an abstract concept One of the reasons is undoubtedly that stories bring ideas to life and help readers see abstract concepts in action. The colours each had several meanings, some of which were abstract ideas, some concrete as in the cattle and sheep example. It will be easier at this time to put abstract ideas into concrete form. Freedom of the press is not an abstract concept, freedom of the press has a purpose: to deliver the truth. Making haiku is a most effective way of exploring ways of expressing abstract concepts in concrete language, of pulling out the essence of a feeling and making it into something unique. I urge that the general public be made more aware of this very useful result of a very abstract physical theory. In that profession you start with a blank sheet of paper and a concept or abstract idea. It means a combination of things, both abstract and physical. Numbers in early historical times were thought of much more concretely than the abstract concepts which are our numbers today. This is a laudable but somewhat abstract concept. Thus, ‘the Chinese are always forced by the very nature of the language to resort to concrete expression for abstract concepts’. Poetry allows us to examine science in a way that purely scientific discourse cannot by analogizing abstract concepts into concrete forms. Even at the time, it was very obvious to me that these were not people who were interested in ideas or ethereal, abstract notions of human liberty. What is relevant in the economic realm is not an abstract concept or formula - no matter how beautiful - but its physical embodiment. Fabre explains that his metaphors are simultaneously real and illusory, physical and abstract, living and dead. Or is it an abstract place existing inside people's minds? The function of a metaphor is to explain one thing in terms of another thing - typically, to clarify an abstract concept by comparing it to something concrete. Wilber has so far failed to attract the large mainstream audience that his ideas deserve - in part because his writing is so often abstract and theoretical. One conclusion that one might be tempted to draw from this is that mathematical truths cannot, after all, imply the existence of specific abstract objects of any kind. Like Borges, his writing examines the consequences of abstract theories in the physical world. Synonyms theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic 1.1 Dealing with ideas rather than events. the novel was too abstract and esoteric to sustain much attention Example sentencesExamples Video has a place on blogs, especially in reporting about tsunamis and other events that are dramatic and not abstract. Looking at German games, all of them have a strong abstract base to them. Neither has Lane done himself any favours by dispensing with a chronological narrative in favour of themed chapters with abstract titles such as Complicity and Betrayal. I found it abstract and rather unmoving, more of an idea for a drama than a compelling drama itself. The choreography is abstract and seemed very difficult - it demands strong technique and exactness. Certainly, if last night's showing was anything to go by, his work was somewhat abstract and obscure, and obviously an acquired taste. Potokar's poetry seems rather abstract, at times cryptic, but at the same time palpable and relentless in its attempt to fight despair and solitude. They are very abstract, based on mythical and dreamy themes. These stories are not abstract or theoretical and they communicate a local opinion directly. Lyrics are abstract and often inscrutable, but powerful images sometime fight through the verbal and instrumental haze. It's about the right image going with the right story in the right direction, rather than it being abstract. Her comments in interviews and at readings, likewise, reveal the startling literalness of her apparently abstract, difficult poems. The pace is languid and events too abstract to be a children's movie, yet corny stunts alienate mature viewers. But the same critics applauded our next production, ‘Search for my Tongue’, which was abstract and based on the loss of identity. The other dream was a lot more abstract and involved. At the moment, for many, it's just too abstract and theoretical. Here's a big goof that new web writers frequently make: writing copy that's too abstract, too esoteric, too philosophical. Some people feel modern dance is difficult to follow, somewhat abstract or esoteric. This debate may appear rather abstract right now. After all, math is so abstract that it's hard to communicate ideas to other mathematicians. Synonyms abstruse, obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied, recondite, difficult, hard, puzzling, perplexing, enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, delphic 1.2 Not based on a particular instance; theoretical. we have been discussing the problem in a very abstract manner Example sentencesExamples While the research work is highly abstract and theoretical, it has practical applications in computer science, Goins notes. For a longer piece of work, you would have the luxury to break down the symbols further and make those symbols interact in a more abstract manner, which will boost the power of the sigil. Not some theoretical, abstract cost, but a real cost. Second, this shaky notion was based on a highly abstract and contentious branch of physics known as string theory. Once we get a hint we are capable of making the original more abstract and less concrete, of extending a concrete and singular concept into more abstract spheres. But equally, he claimed that he was capable of dissociating himself from his physical disorders only through abstract thought. It came through concrete example and abstract argument. Courts are not supposed to decide questions which are merely moot, theoretical, abstract or hypothetical. So a culture based on abstract reasoning, or on various metaphysical precepts, may itself be simply a product of evolutionary change. Modem science, no matter how theoretical, speculative and abstract, strives finally for empirical evidence to test and confirm its truth claims. It is grotesquely, disastrously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation. They mean something more abstract - a philosophical schema for governing, which often amounts to a slogan to describe one's ideology. My political culture is empirical rather than abstract. We respond to dangers that our ancestors equipped us to understand, like fire and fangs and claws, more readily than we respond to threats based on abstract reasoning. There, I can discuss things from my past in an abstract manner, without directly pointing fingers. The question of Being, far from being too abstract or theoretical an issue, will prove to be important for understanding exile. But these laws and theorems are not just abstract mathematics. Those were theoretical or abstract possibilities not applying to this case. I can understand why she has that impression; many gay-marriage advocates have talked about gay marriage in these rather loose and abstract terms. The reason for believing that it is a largely abstract and theoretical issue is that the Court of Appeal judgments implied strongly that that was so. Synonyms theoretical, conceptual, notional, intellectual, metaphysical, philosophical, academic 1.3 (of a word, especially a noun) denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object. abstract words like truth or equality Example sentencesExamples Verbs and adjectives are more abstract, and so are more difficult concepts for children's minds to grasp. Sitor, according to Nirwan, often achieves this by using abstract nouns. Liberty is a ponderous and not-to-be-used-lightly abstract noun. The more the state expands in this way, the more success it will enjoy in the only one of its wars on abstract nouns it wages unremittingly - the War on Capital. There is nothing wrong in principle in waging war on an abstract noun; the British navy successfully waged a war on slavery, by which they meant a war on slavers. Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract. How, if it's a category mistake to think that you can fight a war against it, do you organise an international campaign against an abstract noun? This is, strangely enough, an unusual example of an abstract noun being masculine in Hebrew - most of them are feminine. But it is Brutus who is the most instantly recognisable modern figure in his use of abstract nouns to justify political ends. As your Honours have seen the substantive provision of the Act is one which uses the abstract noun. The former is an abstract noun, the latter is a person. And although ubuntu can be grammatically classified as an abstract noun, it is often employed in relational contexts. Today in Mr. Danton's class, I got hit with a ruler again for saying love was a concrete noun and not an abstract one. There will be confusion if we continue to use the word ‘morality’ because it is an abstract noun. All the stories were written specifically for this collection - all have abstract nouns as titles and all are thematically linked. But terror is an abstract noun, not a country as our Constitution pickily insists for a war. The most difficult task for the mothers was to explain the concept of abstract nouns and mimetic words in Korean. Perspicacity is an abstract noun describing a certain capacity of a certain capability. You cannot have a war on an abstract noun. ‘Terrorism’ is that. One does not mind the ending, but one notices that when Taylor strings together abstract nouns, he is at his least compelling. 2Relating to abstract art. abstract pictures that look like commercial color charts Example sentencesExamples It's a beautiful work of abstract colour and texture, of contrasting dark and light. Rothko stresses that the contrast between abstract and representational painting is overdrawn, that all art has subject matter. Boxer is perhaps best known for richly textured abstract canvases, championed by critic Clement Greenberg. The landscape background of Elizabeth's portrait in particular is remarkably abstract, using strong colour and thick impasto. She is represented by two unprepossessing abstract heads rendered in polychrome clay. Her work is abstract, using geometrical shapes subtly arranged and typically painted in soft colours. Both legs and abstract shapes contribute to an almost painterly overall compositional effect. These two shows, a few months apart, displayed the tactile and abstract effects she wrings from such small-scale marks. His later style of the 1940s is more abstract and colour becomes the most important factor. They resemble cone-like wall sconces, and the colorful abstract shapes covering their surfaces appear to glow like stained glass windows. In the '50s, he made heavily textured abstract paintings using crumpled mulberry paper and globs of oil paint. The layers of abstract colour in her current work recalls another German painter, Gerhard Richter. Several artists claimed to be the first to paint an abstract picture, rather as early photographers had wrangled over who had invented the camera. This sort of abstract illusionism brings to mind certain early canvases by Bridget Riley. For these abstract artists, the external world is mediated by internal feelings. Goodwin now works in both representational and abstract modes. I remember how Robert Motherwell didn't like the term abstract expressionism and preferred abstract automatism. The lower half of the artwork consists of dark splotches and torn-paper abstract effects. Their plainly representational knotty, bark-covered surface contrasts with the immaterial, abstract shapes of the molding. Her use of abstract effects in the service of representation is striking and makes her art complex. Synonyms non-representational, non-realistic, non-pictorial, symbolic, impressionistic verbæbˈstræktabˈstrakt [with object] 1Consider (something) theoretically or separately from something else. to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism no object he cannot form a general notion by abstracting from particulars Example sentencesExamples This becomes abstracted from the original idea, possibly to become unrecognizable. Surveys pick out contentious conclusions on divine unity and Trinity and Incarnation and other topoi, abstracted from the original warp and weft, as though the latter were mere packaging. From the mathematician's point of view, the advantage in abstracting a point from its diverse incarnations lies in the resulting generality. It has been said, for example, that Aquinas is not really interested in the Trinity and the incarnation, that he is chiefly concerned to promote a notion of God abstracted from orthodox Christian teaching. Succeeds because it's stylistically brilliant, and because it hooks the experience of being black in America into universal human experiences of rage and alienation without ever abstracting or moving away from the particulars of race. These are two senses in which mathematics is an abstract subject: it abstracts the important features from a problem and it deals with objects that are not concrete and tangible. It shouldn't be abstracted from the debate about Europe's crisis. By relating what Gandhi said to what he did and by examining instances of satyagraha led by others, this book abstracts from the Indian experiments those essential elements that constitute the Gandhian technique. Reason however in the Edinburgh Enlightenment was still prior to experience: the people are a body ‘out there’; visible, and abstracted from action. The flaw in that approach, in our submission, is that it tends to dismember the definition of ‘refugee’ in Article 1A and then abstracts a particular element from its context and seeks to say that the Tribunal must deal with that element. But, while Elkins writes good staccato dialogue, he abstracts his characters from society. You can know when a lake will freeze or a pot will boil by abstracting the big picture from all the little details. It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation. The soul forms in itself likenesses of things inasmuch as, through the light of agent intellect, forms abstracted from sensible objects are made actually intelligible, so as to be received in the possible intellect. 2Extract or remove (something) applications to abstract more water from streams Example sentencesExamples In retrospect this appears so, but we have to remember that he abstracted his axioms from observation of the real world. A potential toxic bloom has been found on the lake from which drinking water supplies for much of the county, including the towns of Killarney and Tralee and surrounding countryside, are abstracted. The water has not been ‘predrunk’; it is not abstracted from a river and is as good as the best water you could find anywhere, even bottled. Not only is the self unable to bestow form from lived life, but also the objects themselves cannot receive it until they are abstracted from their lived-life utility. The point is this - we cannot abstract ideas from the historical epoch in which they appeared. The most egregious of these is the tendency, exemplified by Norm and Omar, to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question. Thus, once mixes are abstracted from their interpersonal context and reified within a commercial context, they lose much of their meaning. The County Council has contacted all group schemes abstracting from Lough Arrow in relation to their presence. But I take comfort in our inability to delineate the ‘entire picture’ - at best we can abstract a stable whole from the flow of its parts, and that can never be ‘true’. If we abstract the technical from its social context and cultural foundations, technology appears to develop outside of society, following a trajectory of its own making. I knew that I needed to abstract what I wanted from the general confusion and the disorder of the scene. What makes the humanities (separate from the arts) important is that they take the areas where we have insufficient data and try to abstract useful principles from it. If one wanted to abstract a general rule from the affair it might well be ‘to make a building look effeminate, trashy and like something out of Disneyworld, be sure to add banded pink stripes’. Greene was a poet, in the true sense of the word, and it is misleading and dangerous to abstract theological concepts from the work of a poet (a good poet), or from the drama of a concrete life. Five of the lengthy series of lithographed modeles that Goupil aimed primarily at aspiring artists included motifs, mostly head studies, abstracted from Delaroche paintings. This intermediate acts as a base to abstract protons from the Zn-H 2 O to produce the nucleophilic Zn-OH - species. And, even though Patrick Mason's production is presented by Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Company, I question his decision to abstract the play from its Irish setting with its echoes of the Ulysses Night-town sequence. When devising a model, one tries to ignore as much as possible about the phenomenon under consideration, abstracting from it only those features that are essential to understanding its behaviour. Potato producers who abstract water from Pembrokeshire's rivers and streams could have their licences revoked by new European legislation. The primary student concerns with Module 6, as with Module 4 and Module 5, were the time needed to complete the module and the frustration encountered in abstracting the necessary information from some of the computer systems. Synonyms extract, pump, draw, draw off, tap, suck, withdraw, remove, take away, take out 2.1 Used euphemistically to say that someone has stolen something. his pockets contained all he had been able to abstract from the apartment Example sentencesExamples He was sentenced to six years for the production of cannabis and four years for abstracting electricity. Synonyms purloin, thieve, take, take for oneself, help oneself to, loot, pilfer, abscond with, run off with, appropriate, carry off, shoplift 2.2abstract oneself Withdraw. as our relationship deepened you seemed to abstract yourself Example sentencesExamples Rose found it hard to abstract herself from the lives of these women but she knew that she had to make that distance in order to tell their story without preaching her anger. One thing suggested here is that only when you are able to abstract yourself, to look at yourself as if at a distance, as if you were mourning yourself, can you recognize yourself in a way that allows you to remember that you are alive at all. I removed my ‘About’ page and I took a conscious decision to abstract myself (though of course I'm not naïve enough to think that you won't find my name if you really want to). Bunting even botches an attempt by his wife to reconcile, abstracting himself from the romance of the moment in pursuit of a dry, theoretical point. It's melancholic, but never chilly in the way that much electronica can be and doesn't ever abstract itself out of existence. It assumes humans can abstract themselves from reality and go romping through history looking for the all-powerful distant cause that will explain each and every aspect of our current situation. Indeed, its dramatic argument is that such a personality either abstracts itself out of existence or falls into contradiction and self-destructs. Even Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century decided that the mind must function primarily as intellect, abstracting itself from presence, to focus upon an ‘other’ that is external- ‘out there,’ whether that be called nature or God. So it's always the moment when I'm stuck in reality - I have to abstract myself from it. She abstracted herself from her inconvenient desire; she set herself at a distance from it and inspected it, as if it were a fungus of the spirit, asserting itself without permission. Synonyms leave, go, go away, go off, take one's leave, take oneself off, withdraw, absent oneself, say one's goodbyes, quit, make an exit, exit, break camp, decamp, retreat, beat a retreat, retire 3Make a written summary of (an article or book) staff who index and abstract material for an online database Example sentencesExamples Costs were figured from a health service perspective by abstracting data from primary care case records. Because ventilator data are not routinely abstracted into administrative data sets, community-based, longitudinal studies of changes in ALI therapy are not available. Final data were abstracted directly from published articles or estimated from descriptive statistics presented in the articles. As we abstracted data directly from original trial reports we minimised the effects of missing data and errors in transcription. We abstracted all prescriptions written by the doctor for the treatment of schizophrenia and diabetes between the start of the study period and the index date. Data were abstracted from each study and summarized. It is abstracted and indexed in a wide array of major social science sources (as printed inside the front cover) but these are less commonly used by the biological sciences. This is the form in which the European Court abstracted the relevant part of Article 6 in paragraph of its decision. The microfiche are abstracted, indexed, and published in a bimonthly periodical titled Declassified Documents Catalog. Final data were abstracted directly from the publications or estimated from data tabulations in the articles. Summarizing (also called abstracting or generalizing) occurs when a student produces a short statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme. Conversely, the same volunteer scholar (noted by his initials at the end of the record) abstracted another article more thoroughly. We thank Michelle Grondin for her help in retrieving articles and abstracting data and Nancy Cleary for her administrative assistance. Our article was critically reviewed and abstracted by York University at the request of the British Synonyms summarize, write a summary of, precis, abridge, condense, compress, shorten, cut down, abbreviate, synopsize nounˈæbˌstræktˈabˌstrakt 1A summary of the contents of a book, article, or formal speech. an abstract of his inaugural address Example sentencesExamples We reviewed abstracts and selected relevant articles. Content that we intend keeping free throughout this period includes abstracts of articles, rapid responses, and the Editor's Choice column. They spent many hours searching in commercial databases, looking for abstracts and full-text articles. Dr. De Luca has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over 200 abstracts, a book, and holds 12 patents. An abstract of this article has been published. We categorized the articles using the abstracts, and, when necessary, we asked the authors to classify their work correctly. I found numerous abstracts and articles that contain good wound care as part of a general recommendation to practitioners, usually in the conclusion of the document. Furthermore, while abstracts of novel drug types were more likely to be presented at the meeting, they were no less likely than abstracts on non-novel drugs to be published. Today we are beginning to publish abstracts of speeches made at the conference. The dissertation title should appear on all five abstracts, although only one should identify the author and provide a current mailing address and daytime telephone number. Click on the ‘enlarge image’ link to access a brief explanation and a link to the abstract for that article. Some of the non-English articles provided an English abstract, while others did not. Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword. The present review includes a few large and several small trials published as abstracts or full articles in many journals. Two independent reviewers selected the relevant abstracts and articles. In my view, it is first necessary to remove all abstracts, conference talks, proceedings, and other unrefereed publications from the listing. Journal articles usually have abstracts, so you can draw on these for guidance on how to approach this task. In the meantime, many journals provide at their Web sites at least a limited listing of tables of contents of their most recent issues, sometimes with abstracts and occasional articles. Over the intervening years, over 20 research papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or as research abstracts. He has published over 60 articles, book chapters and abstracts. Synonyms summary, synopsis, precis, résumé, outline, recapitulation, abridgement, condensation, digest, summation 2An abstract work of art. a big unframed abstract Example sentencesExamples However, the customer wandered away to look at an abstract in big, bold colors. Quinn, Rolando and Campbell report that contemporary abstracts and landscapes are their biggest sellers. Equally, every painting, however realistic, is an abstract. ‘If she were a painting she'd have to be an abstract by Picasso because she has so many faces,’ he said. She tried working in a different, much looser style and even painted abstracts, but her paintings in this new vein were coolly received and after 1962 she did not exhibit her work. A good way to start is with the gallery devoted to his works on paper, which, aside from several highly covetable two-dimensional abstracts, includes dozens of sketches for major projects. Ranging from classic black and white shots featuring line and form to intriguing abstracts in colour, the exhibition charts Rob's photographic journey during this period. The choice of painting marked a departure from the norm for Finnegan; up till then landscapes and abstracts were the only paintings in her home. It was a figurative abstract of Pare Argile holding his son as a newly born baby. It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings. The works include landscapes, still lifes, figuratives, abstracts and pastels, by approximately 75 artists. Some were boring portraits but the abstracts caught my gaze. Working in acrylics, inks, and soft pastels her paintings range from tender abstracts depicting human emotions to more powerful and emotive images full of eastern promise and the mystical unknown. He was surprised when the kids were more attracted to a showcase of Smithsonian abstracts than to a display of Mickey and Minnie art. He has purchased a wide range of artwork, including colorful, cartoonish prints and wild abstracts framed in austere black mouldings. Logically, they are abstracts and yet they seem to be pictures of something concrete, something in, perhaps, a third realm which is neither our mind nor the world. The show consisted of figurative paintings, landscapes and abstracts. Paint-Or-Die manages to represent a wide gamut of modern painting styles: colour-field painting, abstracts, figurative and representational styles are all here. He is now experimenting with big abstracts in oils. Gradually, the artist transited to pure abstracts, investing the image of nature with colours. 3the abstractThat which is abstract; the theoretical consideration of something. the abstract must be made concrete by examples Example sentencesExamples Chagall's public writings did not tend toward the abstract or theoretical. Phrases in the abstract In a general way; without reference to specific instances. there's a fine line between promoting US business interests in the abstract and promoting specific companies Example sentencesExamples Corruption is generally held to be a vice, and viewed in the abstract, it is. And that's certainly a good idea, at least in the abstract and as a general matter. To solve a problem, you're therefore never very interested in Hindu law in the abstract. Charter issues must be decided in the factual context before the court and not in the abstract or on hypothetical facts. And if it isn't going to hurt any specific marriage, it isn't going to hurt marriage in the abstract. I have a strong suspicion that generals are always better in the abstract than in reality. Your paper is in favour of home rule in the abstract but never, it seems in the actual practice. Still, people seem to be more fond of free speech in the abstract than in specific instances. Mentoring is not effective or ineffective in the abstract, but has specific outcomes in specific circumstances. We do not say that there is anything about calling up special reasons, generally, in the abstract, as being a vice in legislation. Such ideals cannot be lived in the abstract, they must be performed. Synonyms in principle, on paper, in the abstract, all things being equal, in an ideal world Origin Middle English: from Latin abstractus, literally ‘drawn away’, past participle of abstrahere, from ab- ‘from’ + trahere ‘draw off’. adj.1 phr.
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