Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

abstraction

[ab-strak-shuh

noun

an abstract or general idea or term.

the act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.

an impractical idea; something visionary and unrealistic.

the act of taking away or separating; withdrawal: The sensation of cold is due to the abstraction of heat from our bodies.

secret removal, especially theft.

EXPAND

absent-mindedness; inattention; mental absorption.

Fine Arts.

the abstract qualities or characteristics of a work of art.

a work of art, especially a nonrepresentational one, stressing formal relationships.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1540–50; < Late Latin abstractiōn- (stem of abstractiō) separation. See abstract, -ion

Related forms

ab·strac·tion·al, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source

Link To abstraction

:10

:09

:08

:07

:06

:05

:04

:03

:02

:01

Abstraction is always a great word to know.

So is lollapalooza. Does it mean:

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Example Sentences

Dove, an abstraction pioneer, set a particularly encouraging example.

But he says no amount of academic abstraction will blind him to the qualities that make folklore so fascinating.

The level of abstraction of these head-of-state types amazes me.

EXPAND

Dove, an abstraction pioneer, set a particularly encouraging example.

But he says no amount of academic abstraction will blind him to the qualities that make folklore so fascinating.

The level of abstraction of these head-of-state types amazes me.

The abstraction says something about the individual.

His gargantuan effort was no less than a triumph of theory, reason and abstraction.

He chose abstraction when the taste in this country ran strongly toward representational art.

Instead, they'll view a visualized abstraction of what's happening.

The marriage lasted three years, during which time she began to experiment with abstraction.

Now, this implies a certain level of abstraction in my work.

Abstraction is inductive thought and involves the construction of options.

Creatures from the sea floor fill the lens in an abstraction of shape and color.

So this abstraction is the same as construction history of string topology.

There he managed to meld abstraction and antiquity, painting and drawing, lament and reverie.

Constantine makes literal what many of us see as metaphor or abstraction.

These works served both as general studies in abstraction and preparatory sketches for sculptures.

Most crises result from abstraction of economic phenomena from reality.

Get to know couple of abstraction which were unknown to me.

The web has to stop being a meringue frosting on the top of business, this make-do melange of mashups and abstraction layers.

To a certain extent, all maps rely on some form of abstraction.

He perceived that the universe was not a faraway abstraction but rather something that included our planet and him.

Species, she argues, are largely a human abstraction rather than a law of nature.

What bothers us all is added abstraction of phony emotion, phony caring shellacked on to a business transaction.

Allowing the frame line to sever part of the subject shifts the picture's purpose-it may become an abstraction or a symbol.

What some think to be an abstraction is in fact a reality.

Unfortunately, the abstraction that predominates in teaching statements works against their being more useful.

The key thing in biology is to have the correct level of abstraction for the phenomenon you are trying to study.

His idea is that the abstraction is available as a single cognitive chunk which can be used as an element in thinking and debate.

We also have a high degree of consciousness that is specific to the level of abstraction required for processing.

Dragt's work takes an abstraction of the computer jargon, then renders it in a literal form.

It slips fluidly between abstraction and representation.

First, abstraction leads to circularity in both argumentation and presentation.

Seems to me that entanglement suggests that this pair is entangled at a level of abstraction that subsumes space-time.

It's a deeper layer of abstraction that makes a mystery out of language.

The promise of modern painting, so the old story went, was fulfilled with the achievement of complete abstraction.

The total energetically explores artistic process, color and abstraction.

Holistic thinking means beginning with the understanding of the highest abstraction level.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

abstraction (æbˈstrækʃən)

—n
1.	absence of mind; preoccupation
2.	the process of formulating generalized ideas or concepts by extracting common qualities from specific examples
3.	an idea or concept formulated in this way: good and evil are abstractions
4.	logic See also lambda calculus an operator that forms a class name or predicate from any given expression
5.	an abstract painting, sculpture, etc
6.	the act of withdrawing or removing

ab'stractive

—*adj*

ab'stractively

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

abstraction ab·strac·tion (āb-strāk'shən, əb-)
n.

Distillation or separation of the volatile constituents of a substance.
Exclusive mental concentration; absent-mindedness.
A malocclusion in which the teeth or associated structures are lower than their normal occlusal plane.
The selection of a certain aspect of a concept from the whole.

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

abstraction definition

1. Generalisation; ignoring or hiding details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances. Examples are abstract data types (the representation details are hidden), abstract syntax (the details of the concrete syntax are ignored), abstract interpretation (details are ignored to analyse specific properties).
2. Parameterisation, making something a function of something else. Examples are lambda abstractions (making a term into a function of some variable), higher-order functions (parameters are functions), bracket abstraction (making a term into a function of a variable).
Opposite of concretisation.
(1998-06-04)

Word Dynamo By Dictionary.com

Searching for abstraction?
How many words do you actually know?

FIND OUT

lady measure phobic small subnet syntax

Images for abstraction

Matching Quote

"New York ... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation."

-Roland Barthes

Partners:Word Bloglines Citysearch The Daily Beast Ask Answers Ask Kids Life123 Sendori Thesaurus

About Privacy Policy Terms of Use API Careers Advertise with Us Contact Us Help