Definition of "abstract"

An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.  quotations  examples

Something that concentrates in itself the qualities of a larger item, or multiple items.  quotations

1. Concentrated essence of a product.  examples

2. (medicine) A powdered solid extract of a medicinal substance mixed with lactose.  examples

An abstraction; an abstract term; that which is abstract.  quotations  examples

The theoretical way of looking at things; something that exists only in idealized form.  examples

(art) An abstract work of art.  examples

(real estate) A summary title of the key points detailing a tract of land, for ownership; abstract of title.  examples

(obsolete) Derived; extracted.

(now rare) Drawn away; removed from; apart from; separate.  quotations

Not concrete: conceptual, ideal.

1. Insufficiently factual.  examples

2. Apart from practice or reality; vague; theoretical; impersonal; not applied.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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), […]

     1999, Nicholas Walker, “The Reorientation of Critical Theory: Habermas”, in Simon Glemdinning, editor, The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy‎, Routledge, page 489

3. (grammar) As a noun, denoting a concept or intangible as opposed to an object, place, or person.  examples

Difficult to understand; abstruse; hard to conceptualize.  quotations  examples

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

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.  quotations  examples

(archaic) Absent-minded.  quotations

(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 20th century.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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.

     1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 12, in Crome Yellow‎, London: Chatto & Windus

2. (music) Absolute.  examples

3. (dance) Lacking a story.  examples

(object-oriented programming, of a class) Being a partial basis for subclasses rather than a complete template for objects.  examples

(transitive) To separate; to disengage.  quotations

1. (transitive) To remove; to take away; withdraw.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

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

     1834, Harriet Martineau, Illustration of Political Economy, volume IX

2. (transitive, euphemistic) To steal; to take away; to remove without permission.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

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

     1872, William Black, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton

   • 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.

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

   • 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.

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

3. (transitive, obsolete) To extract by means of distillation.  quotations

   Quotations

   • Poison from roses who could e'er abstract?

     1601, John Marston, Antonio's Revenge, act II, scene I

4. (transitive) To draw off (interest or attention).  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • The young stranger had been abstracted and silent.

     June 1869, William Blackwood, Late for the Train (published in Blackwood's Magazine)

5. (intransitive, reflexive, literally, figuratively) To withdraw oneself; to retire.  examples

6. (transitive) To consider abstractly; to contemplate separately or by itself; to consider theoretically; to look at as a general quality.  quotations

   Quotations

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

     1781, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume II

   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.  examples

   2. (intransitive, rare) To perform the process of abstraction.  quotations

      Quotations

      • I own myself able to abstract in one sense.

        1710, George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

   3. (intransitive, fine arts) To create abstractions.  examples

   4. (intransitive, computing) To produce an abstraction, usually by refactoring existing code. Generally used with "out".  examples

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