1 based on general ideas and not on any particular real person, thing or situation:
abstract knowledge / principles * The research shows that pre-school children are capable of thinking in abstract terms.
compareCONCRETEadj.(2)
2 existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical reality:
We may talk of beautiful things but beauty itself is abstract.
3 (of art) not representing people or things in a realistic way, but expressing the artist's ideas about them:
the work of American abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko
compareFIGURATIVE(2), REPRESENTATIONAL
abstractly adverb
Part of speech: noun
1 an abstract work of art:
Kandinsky's first pure abstracts are marked by their wild colour.
2 a short piece of writing containing the main ideas in a document
SYNSUMMARY
IDIOMS
in the abstract in a general way, without referring to a particular real person, thing or situation:
Legal questions rarely exist in the abstract; they are based on real cases. * I'm just talking in the abstract now.
verb [VN]
1 ~ sth (from sth) to remove sth from somewhere:
She abstracted the main points from the argument. * a plan to abstract 8 million gallons of water from the river
2 (technical) to make a written summary of a book, etc.
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for abstract is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is abstract a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, abstract is tagged as adjective.
Does abstract appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — abstract appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
