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

From a distance, these stark white pieces are twisting abstract forms, but as you move closer the tragedy frozen in time comes into focus.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 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

His debut album has drawn comparisons to Radiohead and Jeff Buckley for its moments of abstract beauty and devastating emotional release.

From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026

According to an abstract presented at a medical meeting, there were improvements based on the Disease Activity Index, a common score for assessing the severity of ulcerative colitis.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026

But he’d been building this abstract new life for them since Luke took state their freshman year.

From "We'll Fly Away" by Bryan Bliss

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

The evening sale will also include several newer abstracts, dated to 2008 and 2009.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 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

IMGs had an average of 54 abstracts, presentations, and papers in 2022.

From Science Magazine ● May 3, 2024

As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach.

From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

Brown’s dreamlike visions of the climate and uniquely structured scenes—often with barely there foregrounds that emphasize the abstracted weather surrounding them—owe much to his mentor Ray Yoshida, as well as to Joseph Yoakum.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

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

In England, water is abstracted by water companies for public supply, by industry and for use in electricity generation, such as power station cooling.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2025

What remains consistent is that in these kitchens, food is abstracted from its source and re-presented as something new.

From Slate ● Mar. 15, 2025

I was brought out of my abstracted state by a salmon-colored cloud passing low in the sky.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

“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

The EA added that it had previously warned the estate to stop over abstracting water in 2018.

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