Noun Abstraction Definition and Examples







The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.
  1. 'It is the perspective of abstract ideality that, just because of its abstraction, is morally justified.'
  2. 'That exercise provides no support at all for the idea that Heather is incapable of handling abstraction.'
  3. 'The question is one which is much affected by the degree of abstraction with which it is posed.'
  4. 'He can flit from populist argument to high brow abstraction and then back into quango-speak and then consultancy jargon with amazing felicity.'
  5. 'Similarities across actually encountered expressions allow the extraction of schemas of varying degrees of abstraction.'
  6. 'But it is still very uncomfortable when the discourse moves beyond rather bare abstraction.'
  7. 'To do this entails a degree of abstraction in the course of which patternings emerge, patternings of repetition and difference.'
  9. 'Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood.'
  11. 'the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction'
  12. 'At one time, God was more than a hypothetical abstraction, and faith in his providence and design buttressed every major discipline of study.'
  13. 'He had instructed her in the great abstractions of German philosophy, as expanded and amended by himself.'
  14. 'It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as ‘them’.'
  15. 'When I'm writing I often start out with abstractions and academic jargon, and purge it.'
  16. 'This study shows that throughout his life, Guru Nanak did not indulge in metaphysical abstractions or recondite analysis of various religious thoughts.'
  17. 'America cannot intervene, because the nation exists only as an abstraction.'
  18. 'He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control.'
  19. 'The modern way of waging war renders the abstractions of just-war theory obsolete.'
  20. 'Software is not just an abstraction that exists in isolation.'
  21. 'He was a man whose mind was closed to abstractions and new ideas.'
Freedom from representational qualities in art.
  1. 'Indeed, the animation style moves from abstraction to representation to abstraction again, as if to mirror the processes by which our world was formed.'
  2. 'It is a work of perfect weighting that shows that Hodgkin can still patrol the slippery frontiers between abstraction and representation.'
  3. 'From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later.'
  4. 'Murray is adept at achieving an osmotic relationship of sorts between geometric and painterly abstraction.'
  5. 'Recent memorials also reflect art's shift from representation to abstraction to a kind of alchemic transformation of image and material into a work of meaning.'
  6. 'The time has come to think beyond the divides of Pop and Minimalism, of Dada and abstraction, and of avant-garde and modernism.'
  7. 'The postwar years reignited discussions about the relevance of abstraction versus representation, an issue that had preoccupied many artists before the war.'
  8. 'That show laid out the paradigmatic, innovative modernist journey from representation to abstraction.'
  9. 'One beneficial effect of this curatorial decision was to emphasize that Palermo never gave up representation in favor of abstraction.'
  10. 'Many of the quilts on view could almost be, if you squint, works of geometric abstraction by modern painters.'
  11. 'critics sought the meaning of O'Keeffe's abstractions'
  12. 'The horizontal bands of sky and sea take on the rich tonal consistencies of a Rothko abstraction.'
  13. 'In some cases this involves paintings of studio setups that resemble formalist abstractions.'
  14. 'Aware of the abstractions of Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Guston moved alongside them, exploring colour, space and painterly touch alone.'
  15. 'In another image, he paints himself as a Mondrian abstraction, the hints of his profile enough to jar the harmonious verticals and horizontals out of alignment.'
  16. 'The great landscape abstractions from the late '50s and early '60s were the showstoppers in the last of the three large rooms.'
  17. 'Quiet Fire in Blue Sky, a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world.'
  18. 'A section of chipboard becomes a painterly abstraction, with a faux bark edge as a frame.'
  19. 'Viewed close up, they become satisfying linear abstractions in their own right, in shades of black, white and gray.'
  20. 'Gimblett's ostensibly modernist abstractions are constructed, to an extent, like postmodernist pastiches.'
  21. 'Instead she makes expansive, wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes.'
A state of preoccupation.
  1. 'She seems quiet and reserved, carefully fingering the showy flowers with a wistful air of abstraction, lost in her own thoughts.'
  2. 'The solicitor listened with an air of glassy-eyed abstraction.'
The process of considering something independently of its associations or attributes.
  1. 'I think what plausibility the contrary argument might seem to possess results from treating the act of lighting the cigarette in abstraction from the circumstances as a separate act.'
  2. 'Then, by a process of abstraction, we are supposed to arrive at the basic ‘non-objective’ ‘layer’ of this experience.'
  3. 'It was by no means the last type of association to detach itself from the state by such a process of abstraction.'
  4. 'In abstraction from all such contexts, epistemic questions simply get no purchase.'
  5. '‘Blackness’ once again results from the abstraction of a process or movement into an Idea, and once again becomes an ideology.'
The process of removing something, especially water from a river or other source.
  1. count noun 'abstractions from the Lowther in Cumbria'
  2. 'Mr Lidington said many water users were already struggling to pay their bills and warned that the Bill's proposals on abstraction could push them even higher.'
  3. 'In its submission, the IWAI said the EIS statement showed the abstraction would impact on water levels and considerably affect navigation in average summers.'
  4. 'That was a case which involved the Water Resources Act 1963, which prohibited abstraction of water from a river without a licence from the Water Authority.'
  5. 'The aim is to increase the awareness of the existing legislative and regulatory framework in relation to water abstraction, production limitations and effluent discharges.'
  6. 'Water abstraction, agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollution from sewage treatment plants have all been blamed.'
  7. 'Bad farming practices, soil erosion, water abstraction and the building of dam walls which prevent its upstream spawning migration are just some of the threats it faces.'
  8. 'At last week's meeting, the councillors raised their own issues or concerns about the water abstraction, which is proposed for the northern, upstream side of Athy.'
  9. 'Flow rates have been reduced due to greater water abstraction.'
  10. 'On the Thames these days, with increased water abstraction, the river tends to go quickly from a flood to a no-flow situation.'


1. an abstract or general idea or term.


3. an impractical idea; something visionary and unrealistic.


5. secret removal, especially theft.

6. absent-mindedness; inattention; mental absorption.

7. Fine Arts. the abstract qualities or characteristics of a work of art. a work of art, especially a nonrepresentational one, stressing formal relationships.


"There can be abstraction truths."
"There can be abstraction licensings."
"There can be abstraction bans."
"There can be abstraction aristocracies."
"waters can be abstracted."
"systems can be abstracted."
"processes can be abstracted."
"abstractions can be from rivers."
"abstractions can be on bases."
"properties can be abstracted."
"people/places/organizations can be abstracted."
"people can be abstracted."
"drainages can be abstracted."
"abstractions can be from sets."
"abstractions can be from realities."
"abstractions can be from people/places/organizations."
"abstractions can be to users."
"abstractions can be to things."
"abstractions can be to machines."
"abstractions can be to levels."
"abstractions can surround people at places."
"abstractions can make ways for strengths."
"abstractions can make ways for seriousnesses."
"abstractions can be requirements for accuseds."
"abstractions can arouse incomprehensions in spectators."
"abstractions can work in schools."
"abstractions can surround during times."
"abstractions can surround at places."
"abstractions can make for strengths."
"abstractions can make for seriousnesses."
"abstractions can lead to reformulations."
"abstractions can invest in zincs."
"abstractions can increase by per cents."
"abstractions can go to people/places/organizations."
"abstractions can end with functions."
"abstractions can develop in manners."
"abstractions can develop in courses."
"abstractions can develop as s."
"abstractions can begin with principles."
"abstractions can begin with codes."

Late Middle English: from Latin abstractio(n-), from the verb abstrahere ‘draw away’ (see abstract).

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