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Glite Dictionary
💭 Not concrete 💭 A general concept 🎨 Not realistic 📝 A short summary 🔎 To generalize 📝 To summarize
to abstract

to abstract

6 7.3
To think about something in a general way without details
  • verb
  • /æbˈstrækt/
translation icon : abstraer
  • And what that means is that you have to abstract from the details.
  • abstract away noise
  • abstract rules from data
  • abstract out the relevant

And what that means is that you have to abstract from the details.

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Examples

  • We recognise them by the experiences and we abstract them into symbols.

  • They have to be integrated and they have to again, abstract the essentials, convey it in in an appealing way.

  • And can we abstract this away from experience?

  • So let's abstract from the particular case for now, Yeah.

  • It's it's a way of kind of abstracting from the problem.

  • We can universalize or abstract as as others would say.

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

  • Otherwise, the artists may be tempted to abstract or simply omit important features.

    Academic text (2012)

  • Formulas like those help students make arguments without abstracting themselves from the conversations that surround them.

    Academic text (2008)

  • To solve complex problems, we often need to abstract the main ideas from specific examples.

  • In philosophy, one can abstract complex issues to understand them at a more general level.

Synonyms

to philosophize
vsto abstract
  • US
6 8.1

Think or talk about big ideas like life and truth

is more general, thinking in theory without specific philosophical focus

Antonyms

to focus
∞ 2.6

To direct attention or thoughts toward something specific

Compounds

abstract art
3 3.9

Work made with shapes and colors that does not show real things

Abstract Expressionism
  • Specialized
1 9.1

A style of painting from 1940s New York using large, free, abstract shapes and emotional brush strokes

too abstract
1 9.5

Hard to understand because it lacks clear facts or examples

abstract thought
1 7.4

Ability to think about ideas that are not present and use reason

abstract artist
1 4.2

An artist who uses shapes and colors instead of real people or places

abstract entity
8.3

An idea that exists only in thought, not as a physical thing

abstract nonsense
  • Slang
9.9

Unclear, complicated ideas that are hard to understand and not practical

abstract poetry
  • Literature
8.6

Poetry that expresses ideas and feelings rather than images

How Abstract

to theorize
39 6.1
to abstract
6 7.3
to generalize
  • US
41 4.2
to summarize
  • US
90 3.0
to describe
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

abstract infinitive
abstracted past
abstracted past participle
abstracting present participle
abstracts third person singular

Morphology

abstract = tract (semi-transparent) = ab + tract

The verb sense 'to consider in general' relates to the idea of 'drawing away' from particulars, which can be inferred to some extent but is not fully transparent to lower-level learners.

Etymology

Abstract (verb) comes from ab- 'away' and tract 'draw', so to abstract is to 'draw away' from the details. That is why to abstract means to think in a general way without the specific examples.