Word: abstract Part of Speech: adj Etymology: From Middle English abstract, borrowed from Latin abstractus, perfect passive participle of abstrahō (“draw away”), formed from abs- (“away”) + trahō (“to pull, draw”). The verbal sense is first attested in 1542. Pronunciation: /ˈæbˌstɹækt/, /ˌæbˈstɹækt/, /əbˈstɹækt/ 1. Derived; extracted. Labels: obsolete 2. Drawn away; removed from; apart from; separate. Labels: archaic Example: The more abstract we are from the body ... the more fit we shall be to behold divine light. 3. Not concrete: conceptual, ideal. Example: Her new film is an abstract piece, combining elements of magic realism, flashbacks, and animation but with very little in terms of plot construction. 4. Not concrete: conceptual, ideal. 5. Not concrete: conceptual, ideal. Example: During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, this commitment brought him into frequent critical confrontation with entrenched forms of conservative thinking (in academic areas from history and social science to the more abstract domains of ethical and political philosophy),[…] 6. Not concrete: conceptual, ideal. 7. Difficult to understand; abstruse; hard to conceptualize. Example: The politician gave a somewhat abstract answer when asked about their plans to cut spending. Example: Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene. 8. Separately expressing a property or attribute of an object that is considered to be inherent to that object: attributive, ascriptive. Example: A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing... 9. 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. Example: A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing.[…]A practice, however, has grown up in more modern times, which, if not introduced by Locke, has gained currency from his example, of applying the expression "abstract name" to all names which are the result of abstraction and generalization, and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it to the names of attributes. Example: Given their opposition to innate ideas, philosophers in the empiricist tradition have sought to explain how the rich and multifarious representational capacities that human beings possess derive from experience. A key explanatory strategy in this tradition, tracing back at least as far as John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is to maintain that the acquisition of many of these capacities can be accounted for by a process of abstraction. In fact, Locke himself claims in the Essay that abstraction is the source of all general ideas (1690/1975, II, xii, §1). Although Berkeley and Hume were highly critical of Locke, abstraction as a source of generality has been a lasting theme in empiricist thought. 10. Absent-minded. Labels: archaic Example: Abſtract as in a tranſe methought I ſaw, abstract, as in a trance Example: White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner. 11. Pertaining to the formal aspect of art, such as the lines, colors, shapes, and the relationships among them. Labels: capitalized, often Example: But his design is wonderful. He’s getting more and more abstract every day. He’d given up the third dimension when I was there and was just thinking of giving up the second. Soon, he says, there’ll be just the blank canvas. That’s the logical conclusion. Complete abstraction. 12. Pertaining to the formal aspect of art, such as the lines, colors, shapes, and the relationships among them. 13. Pertaining to the formal aspect of art, such as the lines, colors, shapes, and the relationships among them. 14. Being a partial basis for subclasses rather than a complete template for objects.