abstractions

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
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.

See all 16 meanings of abstraction