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What does the Latin root of abstract translate to?

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abstract

American  

[ab-strakt, ab-strakt, ab-strakt, ab-strakt, ab-strakt] / æbˈstrækt, ˈæb strækt, ˈæb strækt, æbˈstrækt, ˈæb strækt /

adjective

1. 

   thought of apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.

   an abstract idea.

2. expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance, as justice, poverty, and speed.

3. not applied or practical; theoretical.

   abstract science.

4. difficult to understand; abstruse.

   abstract speculations.

5. Fine Arts.

   1. of or relating to the formal aspect of art, emphasizing lines, colors, generalized or geometrical forms, etc., especially with reference to their relationship to one another.

   2. Often Abstract pertaining to the nonrepresentational art styles of the 20th century.

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noun

• abstracts
  plural

1. a summary of a text, scientific article, document, speech, etc.; epitome.

2. something that concentrates in itself the essential qualities of anything more extensive or more general, or of several things; essence.

3. an idea or term considered apart from some material basis or object.

4. an abstract work of art.

verb (used with object)

• abstracts,
  present (3rd person singular)
• abstracted,
  past participle,  past
• abstracting
  present participle

1. to make an abstract of; summarize.

2. to draw or take away; remove.

3. to divert or draw away the attention of.

4. to steal.

5. to consider as a general quality or characteristic apart from specific objects or instances.

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

idioms

1. abstract away from, to omit from consideration.

2. in the abstract, without reference to a specific object or instance; in theory.

   beauty in the abstract.

abstract British  

adjective

1. having no reference to material objects or specific examples; not concrete

2. not applied or practical; theoretical

3. hard to understand; recondite; abstruse

4. denoting art characterized by geometric, formalized, or otherwise nonrepresentational qualities

5. defined in terms of its formal properties

   an abstract machine

6. philosophy (of an idea) functioning for some empiricists as the meaning of a general term

   the word ``man'' does not name all men but the abstract idea of manhood

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noun

1. a condensed version of a piece of writing, speech, etc; summary

2. an abstract term or idea

3. an abstract painting, sculpture, etc

4. without reference to specific circumstances or practical experience

verb

1. to think of (a quality or concept) generally without reference to a specific example; regard theoretically

2. to form (a general idea) by abstraction

3. (also intr) to summarize or epitomize

4. to remove or extract

5. euphemistic to steal

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• abstracter
  noun
• abstractness
  noun
• nonabstractness
  noun
• superabstractness
  noun
• overabstract
  verb (used with object)
• nonabstract
  adjective
• preabstract
  adjective
• superabstract
  adjective
• abstractly
  adverb
• nonabstractly
  adverb
• superabstractly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• abstracts
  plural

Participles

• abstracting
  present
• abstracted
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• abstract
  simple
• abstracts
  simple
• have abstracted
  perfect
• has abstracted
  perfect
• am abstracting
  progressive
• are abstracting
  progressive
• is abstracting
  progressive
• have been abstracting
  perfect progressive
• has been abstracting
  perfect progressive

Past

• abstracted
  simple
• had abstracted
  perfect
• was abstracting
  progressive
• were abstracting
  progressive
• had been abstracting
  perfect progressive

Future

• will abstract
  simple
• will have abstracted
  perfect
• will be abstracting
  progressive
• will have been abstracting
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of abstract

First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English: “withdrawn from worldly interests,” from Latin abstractus “drawn off” (past participle of abstrahere ). See abs-, tract ¹

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Explanation

Use the adjective abstract for something that is not a material object or is general and not based on specific examples. Abstract is from a Latin word meaning "pulled away, detached," and the basic idea is of something detached from physical, or concrete, reality. It is frequently used of ideas, meaning that they don't have a clear applicability to real life, and of art, meaning that it doesn't pictorially represent reality. It is also used as a noun, especially in the phrase "in the abstract" (a joke has a person laying down a new sidewalk saying "I like little boys in the abstract, but not in the concrete"), and as a verb (accented on the second syllable), meaning "to remove."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

abstract abstracts abstracted abstracting

In the before times otherwise known as August 2026, Moshkovitz was talking with a colleague about the Unique Games Conjecture, a highly abstract problem that had occupied her mind for more than a decade.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2026

Scientists suspect that dopamine and norepinephrine work together to support learning, potentially allowing the brain to acquire several complex and abstract concepts at the same time.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2026

Isamu Noguchi created a baby monitor before baby monitors were a thing: the Radio Nurse, a dark Bakelite receiver resembling an abstract face.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026

My colleague Alex Galbraith recently argued that food may be where consumers most easily recognize the otherwise abstract mechanics of private equity.

From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026

Law school had seemed abstract and disconnected before, but after meeting the desperate and imprisoned, it all became relevant and critically important.

From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson

Mirabelle says her father was “funnier and weirder” than some of his rigorously painted abstracts might suggest.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026

He showed Bancel scientific abstracts mapping out new mRNA concepts in cancer biology.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026

All abstracts were reviewed by the congress selection committee.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 13, 2026

The court found the “Gonna Love Me” singer had violated the “prohibition against disclosure of ‘summaries, abstracts, portions and descriptions’” of the final judgment in their divorce.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2025

Evidently it still appeared in the original Red Book, as it did in several of the copies and abstracts.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Krasner’s muscular collages incorporating charcoal drawings made at Hofmann’s school provide a vigorous finale, with the small elements in the abstracted figures enriching the scale.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026

An azure booth is flanked by an abstracted mermaid sculpture, and elsewhere howling wolves are engraved into the bar tops.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026

The show is purposefully abstracted, says Hull, to allow audience members to attach their own narratives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2025

Perhaps I had joined the ranks of the global internet proletariat, hammering clicks on the abstracted factory floor of the future?

From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2025

It was a bad idea to rustle or fidget during these pauses: Aunt Lydia might look abstracted but she was aware of every twitch.

From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

I learned early to keep abstracting out from the trade to the portfolio to the business that produces the portfolio.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026

The bottle is the trap philosophers inadvertently create for themselves by abstracting concepts such as “knowledge,” “being” and “object” from their ordinary usage and analyzing them as though each has some kind of independent essence.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 18, 2025

We should pay less attention to the precedents and more to the impacts, and we need to stop abstracting the actual gains and losses that come out of these decisions.

From Slate ● Jun. 9, 2025

One of the UK's wealthiest women has had to pay £28,000 after abstracting too much water from a chalk stream during a drought.

From BBC ● Feb. 11, 2025

Leisured, and skilled at abstracting from immediate experience, the scholar is able to see how aspects of individual experience constitute a culture.

From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez

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Related Words

• abstruse
• hypothetical
• philosophical
• unreal

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