abstraction

Noun

abstraction (countable and uncountable, plural abstractions)

1. The act of abstracting, separating, withdrawing, or taking away; withdrawal; the state of being taken away.
   • The cancelling of the debt would be no destruction of wealth, but a transfer of it: a wrongful abstraction of wealth from certain members of the community, for the profit of the government, or of the tax-payers.1848, J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy
   1. (euphemistic) The taking surreptitiously for one's own use part of the property of another; purloining.
   2. Removal of water from a river, lake, or aquifer.
2. A separation from worldly objects; a recluse life; the withdrawal from one's senses.
   • a hermit’s abstraction
3. 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.
   • Holonym: induction
   • Abstraction is no positive act: it is simply the negative of attention.c. 1837, W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, published 1860, Lecture XXXV, page 474
4. 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.
5. A member of an idealized subgroup when contemplated according to the abstracted quality which defines the subgroup.
6. The act of comparing commonality between distinct objects and organizing using those similarities; the act of generalizing characteristics; the product of said generalization.

   Synonyms:

   universalization

7. An idea or notion of an abstract or theoretical nature.
   • to fight for mere abstractions
8. Absence or absorption of mind; inattention to present objects; preoccupation.
   • "One penny, sir!" He was roused at once from his abstraction; for it was a question to himself whether he had even that in his pocket. Sixpence was, however, discovered; he paid the toll, and passed on.1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Talisman, page 55
9. An abstract creation, or piece of art; qualities of artwork that are free from representational aspects.
   • At one point, her spidery abstractions gave way to a series of abruptly syncopated hits, like a deranged allusion to the Thelonious Monk tune “Evidence.”2015 June 18, Nate Chinen, “Review: Eric Revis Trio Lets the Music Lead the Way at the Jazz Gallery”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022
10. A separation of volatile parts by the act of distillation.
11. An idea of an idealistic, unrealistic or visionary nature.
12. 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.
13. The merging of two river valleys by the larger of the two deepening and widening so much so, as to assimilate the smaller.
14. Hiding implementation details from the interface of a component, to decrease complexity through interdependency and improve modularity; a construct that serves as such.
    • 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.