abstract

verb

ab·​stract ab-ˈstrakt  ˈab-ˌstrakt 

in sense 3 usually

ˈab-ˌstrakt 

abstracted; abstracting; abstracts

transitive verb

1

: to make a summary or abstract of : summarize

abstract an academic paper

Having med students reading charts and abstracting them is just too slow …

—Jocelyn Kaiser

2

: to draw away the attention of

His imagination had so abstracted him that his name was called twice before he answered.

—James Joyce

3

: steal, purloin

She abstracted important documents from the safe.

4

: remove, separate

abstract water from wells

The complexity has been abstracted away, hidden by a more user-friendly interface.

—Amit Zavery

5

: to think about or understand by separating general qualities, concepts, etc. from specific objects or instances

… they know how it works … and [have] been able to abstract the rules as they go along.

—Craig Wright, quoted in Canberra (Australia) Times

… for Hegel and his followers, the task of art is to abstract the world into pure concept …

—Tom McCarthy

intransitive verb

: to abstract something

… we're able to generalize, to abstract, to see the forest rather than the individual tree.

—Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, quoted in Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada)

abstractable

ab-ˈstrak-tə-bəl 

ˈab-ˌstrak-

adjective

abstractor noun

or abstracter

ab-ˈstrak-tər 

ˈab-ˌstrak-

Did you know?

The Crisscrossing Histories of Abstract and Extract

Abstract is most frequently used as an adjective (“abstract ideas”) and a noun (“an abstract of the article”), but its somewhat less common use as a verb in English helps to clarify its Latin roots. The verb abstract is used to mean “summarize,” as in “abstracting an academic paper.” This meaning is a figurative derivative of the verb’s meanings “to remove” or “to separate.”

We trace the origins of abstract to the combination of the Latin roots ab-, a prefix meaning “from” or “away,” with the verb trahere, meaning “to pull” or “to draw.” The result was the Latin verb abstrahere, which meant “to remove forcibly” or “to drag away.” Its past participle abstractus had the meanings “removed,” “secluded,” “incorporeal,” and, ultimately, “summarized,” meanings which came to English from Medieval Latin.

Interestingly, the word passed from Latin into French with competing spellings as both abstract (closer to the Latin) and abstrait (which reflected the French form of abstrahere, abstraire), the spelling retained in modern French.

The idea of “removing” or “pulling away” connects abstract to extract, which stems from Latin through the combination of trahere with the prefix ex-, meaning “out of” or “away from.” Extract forms a kind of mirror image of abstract: more common as a verb, but also used as a noun and adjective. The adjective, meaning “derived or descended,” is now obsolete, as is a sense of the noun that overlapped with abstract, “summary.” The words intersected and have separated in modern English, but it’s easy to see that abstract applies to something that has been summarized, and summarized means “extracted from a larger work.”

Synonyms of abstract

• distract
• divert
• throw off
• detract

Examples of abstract in a Sentence

… artists in the group put the emphasis on geometric abstraction rather than images abstracted from nature. —Robert Atkins, Art Spoke, 1993

… the Romantic project was to abstract from religion its essential "feeling" and leave contemptuously behind its traditional formulations. —Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, 1969

… conscientiously and with great purity made the uncompromising effort to abstract his view of life into an art work … —Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, 1959

… basic esthetic criteria and standards he has abstracted from long intimacy with time-tested masterpieces. —Aline B. Saarinen, New York Times Book Review, 7 Nov. 1954

Data for the study was abstracted from hospital records.

personal problems abstracted him so persistently that he struggled to keep his mind on his work

Recent Examples on the Web

The splashing water captured by the camera is abstracted into a nebulous fog that dissolves the profile of a Parisian bridge in the background. —Erika Landström, Artforum, 2 June 2026

The category that was trying to abstract away code is now competing against a world in which writing code is no longer the bottleneck. —Ethan Pronev, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026

Beginning in the eighteen-nineties, Karl Blossfeldt took closeups of plants abstracted from their environments, making visible the art of their natural curlicues and reticulations. —Max Norman, New Yorker, 21 May 2026

This visual vocabulary emerged in The Man at the Tree (1968) and The Wood on Its Head (1969), and later devolved, with his subjects abstracted to the point of pulp. —Tessa Solomon, ARTnews.com, 30 Apr. 2026

Word History

Etymology

Middle English abstracten "to draw away, remove," derivative of abstract abstract entry 1 (or borrowed directly from Latin abstractus)

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 4

Phrases Containing abstract

• abstract algebra
• abstract expressionism
• abstract of title
• in the abstract

Rhymes for abstract

• attacked
• attract
• contact
• contract
• detract
• distract
• enact
• exact
• extract
• hijacked
• impact
• intact

Kids Definition

abstract

1 of 3 adjective

ab·​stract ab-ˈstrakt  ˈab-ˌstrakt 

1

: expressing a quality or idea without reference to an actual person or thing

"honesty" is an abstract word

2

: difficult to understand : hard

abstract problems

3

: using elements of form (as color, line, or texture) with little or no attempt at creating a realistic picture

abstract art

abstractly

ab-ˈstrak-(t)lē 

ˈab-ˌstrak-

adverb

abstractness

ab-ˈstrak(t)-nəs 

ˈab-ˌstrak(t)-

noun

abstract

2 of 3 noun

ab·​stract ˈab-ˌstrakt 

: a brief statement of the main points or facts : summary

abstract

3 of 3 verb

ab·​stract ab-ˈstrakt  ˈab-ˌstrakt 

in sense 3 usually ˈab-ˌstrakt

1

: to take out : remove

abstract a diamond from a pile of sand

2

: to consider apart from a particular instance

abstract the idea of roundness from a ball

3

: to make an abstract of : summarize

4

: to draw away the attention of

abstractor noun

or abstracter

-ˈstrak-tər 

-ˌstrak-

Etymology

from Latin abstractus "abstract," from earlier abstrahere "to draw away," from abs-, ab- "from, away" and trahere "to draw" — related to attract, trace entry 1, trace entry 3

Medical Definition

abstract

1 of 2 noun

ab·​stract ˈab-ˌstrakt 

1

: a written summary of the key points especially of a scientific paper

2

: a pharmaceutical preparation made by mixing a powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance with lactose in such proportions that one part of the final product represents two parts of the original drug from which the extract was made

abstract

2 of 2 transitive verb

ab·​stract ˈab-ˌstrakt  ab-ˈ 

: to make an abstract of

abstractor noun

or abstracter

-tər 

Legal Definition

abstract

noun

ab·​stract ˈab-ˌstrakt 

1

: a summary of a legal document

2

: abstract of title

abstract

ab-ˈstrakt, ˈab-ˌstrakt 

transitive verb