abstract
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
abstraktSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
æbstˈɹækt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
The theoretical way of looking at things; something that exists only in idealized form.
Something that concentrates in itself the qualities of a larger item, or multiple items.
Concentrated essence of a product.
An abstraction; an abstract term; that which is abstract.
adjective
Not concrete: conceptual, ideal.
Apart from practice or reality; vague; theoretical; impersonal; not applied.
Difficult to understand; abstruse; hard to conceptualize.
Separately expressing a property or attribute of an object that is considered to be inherent to that object: attributive, ascriptive.
Pertaining comprehensively to, or representing, a class or group of objects, as opposed to any specific object; considered apart from any application to a particular object: general, generic, nonspecific; representational.
Insufficiently factual.
verb
transitive
To separate; to disengage.
transitive
To remove; to take away; withdraw.
Consider a concept without thinking of a specific example; consider abstractly or theoretically
transitive
To consider abstractly; to contemplate separately or by itself; to consider theoretically; to look at as a general quality.
Consider apart from a particular case or instance
“Let's abstract away from this particular example.”
To conceptualize an ideal subgroup by means of the generalization of an attribute, as follows: by apprehending an attribute inherent to one individual, then separating that attribute and contemplating it by itself, then conceiving of that attribute as a general quality, then despecifying that conceived quality with respect to several or many individuals, and by then ideating a group composed of those individuals perceived to possess said quality.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
An 'abstract' is a short summary, usually found at the beginning of a scientific paper or academic article. It gives readers a quick overview of the main points, purpose, and findings without reading the whole text. It helps determine if the full article is relevant.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where you'll really hear it
Academic Journal
“Please read the abstract before deciding to download the full paper.”
University Library Search
“The abstract indicated the research was highly relevant to my topic.”
Conference Program
“Each speaker provided a brief abstract of their presentation.”
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use abstract
- “Abstract words like `truth' and `justice'”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Summary / sketchy
Abstraction
Apart
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A general concept formed by extracting common features from specific examples.
A painter of abstract pictures.
A New York school of painting characterized by freely created abstractions.
An abstract genre of art.
Thinking that is coherent and logical.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.