abstraction

American  

[ab-strak-shuhn] / æbˈstræk ʃən /

noun

• abstractions
  plural

1. an abstract or general idea or term.

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

3. an impractical idea; something visionary and unrealistic.

4. the act of taking away or separating; withdrawal.

   The sensation of cold is due to the abstraction of heat from our bodies.

5. secret removal, especially theft.

6. absent-mindedness; inattention; mental absorption.

7. Fine Arts.

   1. the abstract qualities or characteristics of a work of art.

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

---

abstraction British  

/ æbˈstrækʃən /

noun

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 an operator that forms a class name or predicate from any given expression See also lambda calculus

5. an abstract painting, sculpture, etc

6. the act of withdrawing or removing

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• abstractional
  adjective
• abstractive
  adjective
• abstractively
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• abstractions
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of abstraction

First recorded in 1540–50; from Late Latin abstractiōn-, stem of abstractiō “separation,” literally, “a drawing off,” from abstract(us) “drawn off” + -iō noun suffix; see abstract -ion

---

Explanation

An abstraction is something nonspecific, a concept that isn't concrete. It can also refer to the state of mind in which a person is not paying attention to something but is lost in thought or daydreaming. Abstraction is the noun from the adjective abstract, which derives from the Latin abstrahere "to divert." From that, we can get the idea that an abstraction is something that is drawn away from concrete reality. In the art world, an abstraction is a painting or musical piece created in the style of expressionism, in which a subject is not realistically presented or even recognized, but rather is suggested by an emotional flow of paint or music.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

abstraction abstractions

One of his most recent shows, in fall 2018 at Hollywood’s Kohn Gallery, featured cut metal collages that blended elements of assemblage, Pop Art and abstraction.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026

Trade policy tends to arrive in public dressed in abstraction: percentages, agreements, investigations, duties, markets.

From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026

Over the course of the next half-century, she produced more than 5,000 works in crayon, oil and collage: landscapes and masklike images—amalgams of abstraction, figuration, flora and fauna.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2026

This abstraction turned to subterfuge in the challengers’ briefing before the Supreme Court last month.

From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2026

Everything in the world dies, but we only know about it as a kind of abstraction.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

The lack of recognition, Feldman argues, reverberates through Caland’s heavily impastoed portraits of Moses and her enigmatic late abstractions such as the rectilinear paintings in the “Silent Letter Series.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026

For troops’ families, such abstractions, repeated in media discourse, have concrete consequences when their loved ones don’t come home on time.

From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2026

Arendt would later write with matchless severity about statelessness and the “right to have rights”; here those abstractions acquire a prehistory in German-Jewish arrangements that proved disastrously brittle.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

First, practice distinguishing between what the Constitution says and what judges and justices say about the Constitution, a document riddled with aspirational vagaries and flexible abstractions.

From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2026

While the stories were vivid, the lectures were abstract, treatises on obscure philosophical subjects, and it was to these abstractions that I devoted most of my study.

From "Educated" by Tara Westover

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---