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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

abstraction.

The act of abstracting, separating, withdrawing, or taking away; withdrawal; the state of being taken away.

11 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/əbˈstɹæk.ʃn̩/Received-Pronunciation/æbˈstɹæk.ʃn̩/US/əbˈstɹæk.ʃn̩/US
  1. The act of abstracting, separating, withdrawing, or taking away; withdrawal; the state of being taken away.

    countable · uncountable
  2. The act of abstracting, separating, withdrawing, or taking away; withdrawal; the state of being taken away. The taking surreptitiously for one's own use part of the property of another; purloining.

    countable · euphemistic · uncountable
  3. The act of abstracting, separating, withdrawing, or taking away; withdrawal; the state of being taken away. Removal of water from a river, lake, or aquifer.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A separation from worldly objects; a recluse life; the withdrawal from one's senses.

    countable · uncountable
    a hermit’s abstraction
  5. The act of focusing on one characteristic of an object rather than the object as a whole group of characteristics; the act of separating said qualities from the object or ideas.

    countable · uncountable
    Abstraction is necessary for the classification of things into genera and species.
  6. Any characteristic of an individual object when that characteristic has been separated from the object and is contemplated alone as a quality having independent existence.

    countable · uncountable
  7. A member of an idealized subgroup when contemplated according to the abstracted quality which defines the subgroup.

    countable · uncountable
  8. The act of comparing commonality between distinct objects and organizing using those similarities; the act of generalizing characteristics; the product of said generalization.

    countable · uncountable
  9. An idea or notion of an abstract or theoretical nature.

    countable · uncountable
    to fight for mere abstractions
  10. Absence or absorption of mind; inattention to present objects; preoccupation.

    countable · uncountable
  11. An abstract creation, or piece of art; qualities of artwork that are free from representational aspects.

    countable · uncountable
  12. A separation of volatile parts by the act of distillation.

    countable · uncountable
  13. An idea of an idealistic, unrealistic or visionary nature.

    countable · uncountable
  14. The result of mentally abstracting an idea; the product of any mental process involving a synthesis of: separation, despecification, generalization, and ideation in any of a number of combinations.

    countable · uncountable
  15. The merging of two river valleys by the larger of the two deepening and widening so much so, as to assimilate the smaller.

    countable · uncountable
  16. Hiding implementation details from the interface of a component, to decrease complexity through interdependency and improve modularity; a construct that serves as such.

    countable · uncountable
    Files are an abstraction provided by the file system for storing data, so that applications do not have to care how that data is stored.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English abstraccyone; either from Middle French abstraction or from Medieval Latin abstrāctiō (“separation”), from Latin abstrahō (“draw away”). Equivalent to abstract + -ion.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.