How to Use abstraction in a Sentence
abstraction
noun- She gazed out the window in abstraction.
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Graduation is fresh in their minds; debt is just an abstraction, and the future can still feel open.
—Hua Hsu, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2019
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Ranging from realism to abstraction, their work varies in other ways as well.
—Mike Giuliano, baltimoresun.com, 9 Aug. 2019
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Here all are painted an unlikely shade of soft green, which, with the bracing blue sky, gives the setting the force of abstraction.
—Roberta Smith, New York Times, 12 Sep. 2019
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Whether looking at something from either far away or up close, there is a tendency toward abstraction.
—Mike Giuliano, baltimoresun.com, 26 Sep. 2019
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But unlike a lot of hard-edge abstraction, the stripes vary serendipitously in width and intensity.
—Sharon Mizota, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2019
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Its rigid thematic frame—an arid realm of thinly evoked abstractions—carries over into its composition.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 3 Jan. 2025
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But Amazon is both that tangible company and an abstraction far more powerful.
—Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2019
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While most Americans may favor the death penalty in theory, the actual practice is a remote abstraction for them.
—Matt Ford, The New Republic, 25 July 2019
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The book argues that food and kitchen utensils grounded the abstraction of his paintings in everyday life, and the produce Picasso favoured was unfussy.
—R.d.v., The Economist, 6 Sep. 2019
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Given a choice between an alarming abstraction (death) and the reassuring evidence of my senses (breakfast!), my mind prefers to focus on the latter.
—Jonathan Franzen, The New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2019
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Perhaps people place so much importance on this revelation because, until that point, the child remains an idea, a featureless abstraction.
—Carina Chocano, New York Times, 1 Aug. 2019
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The post-liberals instead offer assurances, abstractions and, most of all, excursions into history.
—Alexander Zaitchik, The New Republic, 25 July 2019
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And they were made in the 1960s, a time when abstraction reigned.
—BostonGlobe.com, 21 May 2021
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The idea of colds as a little trial for the soul is an abstraction.
—Addison Del Mastro, The Week, 16 Feb. 2022
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These make sense in the world they're set in, with little abstraction.
—Chuong Nguyen and Samuel Axon, Ars Technica, 24 Mar. 2023
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For most of us, the intense drought that is gripping most of the state is an abstraction.
—Robert Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune, 28 May 2021
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Our neighbors — and the rest of the world — become abstractions.
—Jim Beckerman, USA TODAY, 26 Oct. 2019
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For most of us, this was how the crisis was viewed - from the abstraction of space, a mutation of the map.
—Henry Wismayer, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2022
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For most of us, this was how the crisis was viewed — from the abstraction of space, a mutation of the map.
—Henry Wismayer, Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2022
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As a measure of time, a year can seem like an abstraction.
—Time, 23 Dec. 2020
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American art was swept up in the post-war rage for abstraction.
—Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2022
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The effects of climate change are no longer an abstraction.
—Washington Post, 26 Oct. 2021
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The Maryland native varies the view with close-ups of water and plants, some of which approach abstraction.
—Washington Post, 23 Apr. 2021
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The abstraction of genre is stripped away to favor the fight-or-flight behavior that slasher movies try to capture in the first place.
—Wired, 10 July 2022
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In those moments, his words seemed like an abstraction.
—Chris Megerian, Vanessa Gera and Aamer Madhani, Anchorage Daily News, 27 Mar. 2022
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The experts are too deep in the weeds, while policy makers seem lost in abstractions.
—Yuval Levin, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2023
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The paintings run the gamut of abstraction, from moody to exuberant.
—Kriston Capps, Washington Post, 30 Aug. 2023
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Af Klint, for those keeping score, seems to have beaten Kandinsky to the punch of modern abstraction by five years.
—Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2021
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From the outset in 2017, chef Jordan Kahn approached food as abstraction: a procession of dishes shaped in alien, sculptural forms, served over four or more hours.
—Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 5 Dec. 2024
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'abstraction.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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