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

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

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

Most enigmatic, perhaps, are large, two-sided, abstract drawings from the 1970s, both used in transferring images to canvas and ends in themselves.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

It’s fairly abstract but not too difficult to describe.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026

The pathway toward the security checkpoint was adorned with a bright abstract mural, hanging lights and swaying palm trees.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026

Jonathan Chait: This is an abstract theoretical point that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, but you never know.

From Slate ● Jul. 31, 2026

It requires an ability to move back and forth between the concrete and the abstract, the immediate example and a scientific theory, and this movement is conceptually and historically problematic.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

This is a model that abstracts away from anatomical detail to focus on the core computations done by simple brains.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026

Pollock gained international fame for holding his brush above his canvases to create swirling, dripping abstracts, and a 11-foot-wide version, “Number 7A, 1948,” was the largest example of his signature style in private hands.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026

The trouble lies in finding Rothko’s coveted, breakthrough 1950s abstracts, as most have filtered into museum collections.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026

He abstracts the written text, creating space between the characters and their lines.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2024

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

Apps themselves might be abstracted away as smartphone agents call online services directly on behalf of their users.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

One might have expected some gesture toward its origins, rather than its cool and highly abstracted references to Harlem.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025

Another key factor is the need to reduce how much water is taken – or "abstracted" – by water companies and other users from England's rivers, the report says.

From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025

For at Disneyland, exaggerations are the norm, and if we let ourselves live in these abstracted worlds, we can sense their heightened emotions.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2025

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of a brooding nature.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

“They’re not really abstracting away a stable comprehension of the world,” Marcus said of LLMs.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 29, 2025

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

Related Words

• abstruse
• hypothetical
• philosophical
• unreal