- (a.) Withdraw; separate.
- (a.) Considered apart from any application to a particular object; separated from matter; existing in the mind only; as, abstract truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.
- (a.) Expressing a particular property of an object viewed apart from the other properties which constitute it; -- opposed to concrete; as, honesty is an abstract word.
- (a.) Resulting from the mental faculty of abstraction; general as opposed to particular; as, "reptile" is an abstract or general name.
- (a.) Abstracted; absent in mind.
- (a.) To withdraw; to separate; to take away.
- (a.) To draw off in respect to interest or attention; as, his was wholly abstracted by other objects.
- (a.) To separate, as ideas, by the operation of the mind; to consider by itself; to contemplate separately, as a quality or attribute.
- (a.) To epitomize; to abridge.
- (a.) To take secretly or dishonestly; to purloin; as, to abstract goods from a parcel or money from a till.
- (a.) To separate, as the more volatile or soluble parts of a substance, by distillation or other chemical processes. In this sense extract is now more generally used.
- (v.t.) To perform the process of abstraction.
- (a.) That which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential qualities of a larger thing or of several things. Specifically: A summary or an epitome, as of a treatise or book or of a statement; a brief.
- (a.) A state of separation from other things; as, to consider a subject in the abstract or apart from other associated things.
- (a.) An abstract term.
- (a.) A powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance mixed with sugar of milk in such proportion that one part of the abstract represents two parts of the original substance.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
| APA | Webster's. (2011). abstract. Retrieved September 20, 2026, from http://smartdefine.org/abstract/definitions/1969955 |
| Chicago | Webster's. 2011. "abstract" http://smartdefine.org/abstract/definitions/1969955 (accessed September 20, 2026). |
| Harvard | Webster's 2011, abstract, Smart Define, viewed 20 September, 2026, <http://smartdefine.org/abstract/definitions/1969955>. |
| MLA | Webster's. "abstract" 27 May 2011. Web. 20 September 2026. <http://smartdefine.org/abstract/definitions/1969955> |