abstraction

noun abstractions

1. countable, uncountable 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.
2. countable, euphemistic, uncountable The taking surreptitiously for one's own use part of the property of another; purloining.
3. countable, uncountable Removal of water from a river, lake, or aquifer.
4. countable, uncountable A separation from worldly objects; a recluse life; the withdrawal from one's senses. a hermit’s abstraction
5. countable, uncountable 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
6. countable, uncountable 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.
7. countable, uncountable A member of an idealized subgroup when contemplated according to the abstracted quality which defines the subgroup.
8. countable, uncountable The act of comparing commonality between distinct objects and organizing using those similarities; the act of generalizing characteristics; the product of said generalization.

   Similar: universalization

9. countable, uncountable An idea or notion of an abstract or theoretical nature. to fight for mere abstractions
10. countable, uncountable 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.
11. countable, uncountable 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.”
12. countable, uncountable A separation of volatile parts by the act of distillation.
13. countable, uncountable An idea of an idealistic, unrealistic or visionary nature.
14. countable, uncountable 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.
15. countable, uncountable The merging of two river valleys by the larger of the two deepening and widening so much so, as to assimilate the smaller.
16. countable, uncountable 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.

Opposite: specialization, concretization