abstracts

Noun

abstract (plural abstracts)

1. An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
   • An analysis and abstract of every treatise he had read.1741, I[saac] Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: Or, A Supplement to the Art of Logick: […], London: […] James Brackstone, […], →OCLC
2. Something that concentrates in itself the qualities of a larger item, or multiple items.
   • Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven hath modeled.1628, John Ford, The Lover's Melancholy
   1. Concentrated essence of a product.
   2. A powdered solid extract of a medicinal substance mixed with lactose.
3. An abstraction; an abstract term; that which is abstract.
   • Thus the concrete like has its abstract likeness; the concretes, father and son, have the abstracts, paternity and filiation.1843, John Stuart Mill, chapter II, in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. […], volume...
4. The theoretical way of looking at things; something that exists only in idealized form.

See all 34 meanings of abstract