abstraction
noun
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From its roots, abstraction should mean basically "something pulled or drawn away". So abstract art is art that has moved away from painting objects of the ordinary physical world in order to show something beyond it. Theories are often abstractions; so a theory about economics, for instance, may "pull back" to take a broad view that somehow explains all of economics (but maybe doesn't end up explaining any of it very successfully). An abstract of a medical or scientific article is a one-paragraph summary of its contents—that is, the basic findings "pulled out" of the article.
Examples of abstraction in a Sentence
Aatish Taseer, Time, 15 July 2025
The graphical user interface, which Apple popularized, adapted that file-and-folder paradigm into an abstraction of a desktop, where users would click and move those files around.
—Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 14 July 2025
Leverage Progressive Abstraction Progressive abstraction lets internal platforms scale with developer maturity.
—Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 24 June 2025
But that was an abstraction that wouldn’t work in live action.
—Bill Desowitz, IndieWire, 7 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for abstraction
Cite this Entry
“Abstraction.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abstraction. Accessed 29 Jul. 2025.
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abstraction
noun
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