abstract

English

Etymology

From Middle English abstract, borrowed from Latin abstractus, perfect passive participle of abstrahō (“draw away”), formed from abs- (“away”) + trahō (“to pull, draw”). The verbal sense is first attested in 1542.

Pronunciation

• Noun:
  • IPA^(key): /ˈæbˌstɹækt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Adjective:
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈæbˌstɹækt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  • (US) IPA^(key): /ˌæbˈstɹækt/, /əbˈstɹækt/, /ˈæbˌstɹækt/
• Verb:
  • IPA^(key): /ˌæbˈstɹækt/, /əbˈstɹækt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ækt

Noun

abstract (plural abstracts)

1. An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
   • 1741, I[saac] Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: Or, A Supplement to the Art of Logick: , London: James Brackstone, , →OCLC:

     An analysis and abstract of every treatise he had read.

2. Something that concentrates in itself the qualities of a larger item, or multiple items.
   • 1628, John Ford, The Lover's Melancholy:

     Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven hath modeled.

   1. Concentrated essence of a product.
   2. (medicine) A powdered solid extract of a medicinal substance mixed with lactose.
3. An abstraction; an abstract term; that which is abstract.
   • 1843, John Stuart Mill, chapter II, in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. , volume I, London: John W Parker, , →OCLC, page 54:

     Thus the concrete like has its abstract likeness; the concretes, father and son, have the abstracts, paternity and filiation.

4. The theoretical way of looking at things; something that exists only in idealized form.
5. (art) An abstract work of art.
6. (real estate) A summary title of the key points detailing a tract of land, for ownership; abstract of title.

Usage notes

• (theoretical way of looking at things): Preceded, typically, by the.

Synonyms

• (statement summarizing the important points of a text): abridgment, compendium, epitome, synopsis

Derived terms

• abstract of title

Descendants

• → Norwegian Bokmål: abstrakt

Translations

Adjective

abstract (comparative more abstract or abstracter, superlative most abstract or abstractest)

1. (obsolete) Derived; extracted.
2. (now rare) Drawn away; removed from; apart from; separate.
   • 17th century, John Norris (philosopher), The Oxford Dictionary:

     The more abstract we are from the body ... the more fit we shall be to behold divine light.

3. Not concrete: conceptual, ideal.

   Synonyms: conceptual, ideal, imaginary, incorporeal, intangible, nonempirical, theoretical

   Antonyms: actual, concrete, corporeal, empirical

   Her new film is an abstract piece, combining elements of magic realism, flashbacks, and animation but with very little in terms of plot construction.

   1. Insufficiently factual.

      Synonym: formal

   2. Apart from practice or reality; vague; theoretical; impersonal; not applied.
      • 1999, Nicholas Walker, “The Reorientation of Critical Theory: Habermas”, in Simon Glemdinning, editor, The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy‎, Routledge, →ISBN, page 489:

        During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, this commitment brought him into frequent critical confrontation with entrenched forms of conservative thinking (in academic areas from history and social science to the more abstract domains of ethical and political philosophy), […]

      Synonyms: conceptual, theoretical

      Antonyms: applied, practical

   3. (grammar) As a noun, denoting a concept or intangible as opposed to an object, place, or person.
4. Difficult to understand; abstruse; hard to conceptualize.

   The politician gave a somewhat abstract answer when asked about their plans to cut spending.

   • 1929, Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms:

     Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene.

   Synonym: abstruse

5. Separately expressing a property or attribute of an object that is considered to be inherent to that object: attributive, ascriptive.

   Synonyms: attributive, ascriptive

   • 1843, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, volume 1, page 34:

     A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing...

6. Pertaining comprehensively to, or representing, a class or group of objects, as opposed to any specific object; considered apart from any application to a particular object: general, generic, nonspecific; representational.

   Synonyms: general, generalized, generic, nonspecific, representational

   Antonyms: discrete, specific, particular, precise

   • 1843, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, volume 1, page 34:

     A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing. […] A practice, however, has grown up in more modern times, which, if not introduced by Locke, has gained currency from his example, of applying the expression "abstract name" to all names which are the result of abstraction and generalization, and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it to the names of attributes.

   • 2012, Laurence, Stephen and Margolis, Eric, Abstraction and the Origin of General Ideas, Philosophers' Imprint volume 12, no. 19, December 2012:

     Given their opposition to innate ideas, philosophers in the empiricist tradition have sought to explain how the rich and multifarious representational capacities that human beings possess derive from experience. A key explanatory strategy in this tradition, tracing back at least as far as John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is to maintain that the acquisition of many of these capacities can be accounted for by a process of abstraction. In fact, Locke himself claims in the Essay that abstraction is the source of all general ideas (1690/1975, II, xii, §1). Although Berkeley and Hume were highly critical of Locke, abstraction as a source of generality has been a lasting theme in empiricist thought.

7. (archaic) Absent-minded.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, line 1099:

     Abſtract as in a tranſe methought I ſaw,
     abstract, as in a trance

   • 1922, D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod:

     White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner.

8. (art) Pertaining to the formal aspect of art, such as the lines, colors, shapes, and the relationships among them.
   1. (art, often capitalized) Free from representational qualities, in particular the non-representational styles of the 20^th century.
      • 1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 12, in Crome Yellow‎, London: Chatto & Windus:

        But his design is wonderful. He’s getting more and more abstract every day. He’d given up the third dimension when I was there and was just thinking of giving up the second. Soon, he says, there’ll be just the blank canvas. That’s the logical conclusion. Complete abstraction.

   2. (music) Absolute.
   3. (dance) Lacking a story.
9. (object-oriented programming, of a class) Being a partial basis for subclasses rather than a complete template for objects.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• reify

Verb

abstract (third-person singular simple present abstracts, present participle abstracting, simple past and past participle abstracted)

1. (transitive) To separate; to disengage.
   • 1822, [Walter Scott], Peveril of the Peak. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC:

     He was incapable of forming any opinion or resolution abstracted from his own prejudices.

   1. (transitive) To remove; to take away; withdraw.
      • 1834, Harriet Martineau, Illustration of Political Economy, volume IX:

        The lightning of the public burdens, which at present abstract a large proportion of profits and wages.

   2. (transitive, euphemistic) To steal; to take away; to remove without permission.
      • 1872, William Black, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton:

        Von Rosen had quietly abstracted the bearing-reins from the harness.

      • 1869, Bholanauth Chunder, The Travels of a Hindoo to Various Parts of Bengal and Upper India:

        The inlaid characters in diamond, and other precious stones, have been all abstracted away by the pelf-loving Jaut and Mahratta—leaving the walls defaced with the hollow marks of the chisel.

      • 2014, A P Simester, J R Spencer, G R Sullivan, Simester and Sullivan's Criminal Law: Theory and Doctrine:

        Section 13 of the 1968 Act enacts a separate offence of dishonestly abstracting electricity. The separate offence is needed because electricity, like other forms of energy such as heat, is not property.

   3. (transitive, obsolete) To extract by means of distillation.
      • 1601, John Marston, Antonio's Revenge, act II, scene I:

        Poison from roses who could e'er abstract?

   4. (transitive) To draw off (interest or attention).
      • June 1869, William Blackwood, Late for the Train (published in Blackwood's Magazine)

        The young stranger had been abstracted and silent.

      He was wholly abstracted by other objects.

   5. (intransitive, reflexive, literally, figuratively) To withdraw oneself; to retire.
   6. (transitive) To consider abstractly; to contemplate separately or by itself; to consider theoretically; to look at as a general quality.
      • 1781, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume II:

        To abstract the notions of time, of space, and of matter.

      1. To conceptualize an ideal subgroup by means of the generalization of an attribute, as follows: by apprehending an attribute inherent to one individual, then separating that attribute and contemplating it by itself, then conceiving of that attribute as a general quality, then despecifying that conceived quality with respect to several or many individuals, and by then ideating a group composed of those individuals perceived to possess said quality.
      2. (intransitive, rare) To perform the process of abstraction.
         • 1710, George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge:

           I own myself able to abstract in one sense.

      3. (intransitive, fine arts) To create abstractions.
      4. (intransitive, computing) To produce an abstraction, usually by refactoring existing code. Generally used with "out".

         He abstracted out the square root function.

2. (transitive) To summarize; to abridge; to epitomize.

Usage notes

• (to separate or disengage): Followed by the word from.
• (to withdraw oneself): Followed by the word from.
• (to summarize): Pronounced predominantly as /ˈæbˌstrækt/.
• All other senses are pronounced as /əbˈstrækt/.

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (to remove, separate, take away, or withdraw): remove, separate, take away, withdraw
• (to abridge, epitomize, or summarize): abridge, epitomize, summarize
• (to filch, purloin, or steal): filch, purloin, steal

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

References

• “abstract”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• abstract in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• “abstract”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “abstract”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Dutch

Dutch Wikipedia has an article on:

abstract

Wikipedia ^nl

Dutch Wikipedia has an article on:

abstracte kunst

Wikipedia ^nl

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French abstract, from Latin abstractus; compare English abstract.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɑpˈstrɑkt/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ab‧stract
• Rhymes: -ɑkt

Adjective

abstract (comparative abstracter, superlative abstractst)

1. abstract
2. (art) abstract

   Antonym: figuratief

Inflection

Derived terms

• abstractie

Descendants

• Afrikaans: abstrak
• → Indonesian: abstrak

Middle English

Alternative forms

• abstracte

Etymology

From Latin abstractus, from abstrahō.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /abˈstrakt(ə)/

Adjective

abstract (Late Middle English, rare)

1. Drawn away or out of; detached:
   1. Excerpted; quoted from another text.
   2. Out of one's mind or detached from reality; temporarily insane.
   3. Having been (pulled or moved) above the ground.
   4. Barely comprehensible; hard to read.
   5. (grammar) Abstract (of a noun).

Related terms

Descendants

• English: abstract
• Scots: abstract

References

• “abstract, ppl.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-24.

Noun

abstract

1. (Late Middle English, rare) abstract, synopsis

Descendants

• English: abstract
  • Norwegian Bokmål: abstrakt
• Scots: abstract

References

• “abstract, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-24.

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin abstractus, German Abstrakt.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /abˈstrakt/,

Adjective

abstract m or n (feminine singular abstractă, masculine plural abstracți, feminine and neuter plural abstracte)

1. abstract

   Antonym: concret

Declension

Related terms

Scots

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈəbstrak(t)/

Noun

abstract (plural abstracts)

1. abstract

Adjective

abstract (comparative mair abstract, superlative maist abstract)

1. abstract

Verb

abstract (third-person singular simple present abstracts, present participle abstractin, simple past abstractit, past participle abstractit)

1. abstract