Definition of abstraction in English:

abstraction

noun əbˈstrakʃ(ə)næbˈstrækʃ(ə)n

mass noun

1The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.
抽象
topics will vary in degrees of abstraction
各个题目的抽象程度不同。
Example sentencesExamples
- It is the perspective of abstract ideality that, just because of its abstraction, is morally justified.
- The question is one which is much affected by the degree of abstraction with which it is posed.
- This may turn into a hypothetical ‘poetics’ of the religious visual image but at least it would be rooted in reality rather than in a realm of abstraction.
- Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood.
- He can flit from populist argument to high brow abstraction and then back into quango-speak and then consultancy jargon with amazing felicity.
- Certainly the idea of number became more and more abstract and this abstraction then makes possible the consideration of zero and negative numbers which do not arise as properties of collections of objects.
- To do this entails a degree of abstraction in the course of which patternings emerge, patternings of repetition and difference.
- In all these cases the process has been one of simplification; of generalisation; and, to some degree, of abstraction.
- That said, my ambition was and still is to bring nuclear weapons out of the realm of abstraction and present them as a concrete subject rather than a theoretical policy issue.
- For a start, the level of abstraction in the argument masks some assumptions that I don't think hold - here's why.
- Rather than address these questions from the realm of critical abstraction, however, Brown, like Bishop, addresses them from one of particulars.
- At that level of abstraction, the idea, though expressed in the design, would not have represented sufficient of the author's skill and labour as to attract copyright protection.
- At this point, neorealism returns full circle to neoclassical abstraction and its generalizing quality.
- Indeed, one might argue that the languages of music and of dance share a degree of abstraction somewhat compromised by the incursion of word and plot.
- That would require either a lot of power, or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level.
- Similarities across actually encountered expressions allow the extraction of schemas of varying degrees of abstraction.
- But it is still very uncomfortable when the discourse moves beyond rather bare abstraction.
- ‘Through abstraction I aspire towards the infinite rather than the specific,’ she observes.
- That surprising, sinking, excited feeling may be the essence of thought as felt experience, rather than as bare abstraction.
- That exercise provides no support at all for the idea that Heather is incapable of handling abstraction.
1. 1.1count noun Something which exists only as an idea.
  抽象概念
  the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction
  不能再把这问题作为学术上的抽象概念来对待。
  Example sentencesExamples
  This historical perspective is by no means simply a theoretical abstraction.
  It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as ‘them’.
  Money is a numeric abstraction that facilitates the trade of ideas and goods.
  He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control.
  He was a man whose mind was closed to abstractions and new ideas.
  America cannot intervene, because the nation exists only as an abstraction.
  This study shows that throughout his life, Guru Nanak did not indulge in metaphysical abstractions or recondite analysis of various religious thoughts.
  As long as the military remains an all-volunteer force, they say, war and death could remain distant abstractions for most Americans.
  He had instructed her in the great abstractions of German philosophy, as expanded and amended by himself.
  Not for Duncan the abstractions and obscurities of academic Marxism.
  Hope is not just a thing, a fantasy, a concept or an abstraction.
  At first the idea was vague and formless, a brilliant abstraction about the surface area of a sphere, which is three times larger than the surface area of a flat chip.
  Do you think she viewed the men in her life as almost Platonic abstractions, as if she didn't really see the person there a lot of times?
  The modern way of waging war renders the abstractions of just-war theory obsolete.
  At one time, God was more than a hypothetical abstraction, and faith in his providence and design buttressed every major discipline of study.
  When I'm writing I often start out with abstractions and academic jargon, and purge it.
  He comes to be disgusted by all abstractions and ideas.
  Software is not just an abstraction that exists in isolation.
  A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society.
  It is no easier in central Nairobi than in Britain to resolve the enormous mental disconnection between the abstractions of politics and the specifics of poverty.
  Synonyms
  concept, idea, notion, thought, generality, generalization, theory, theorem, formula, hypothesis, speculation, conjecture, supposition, presumption
2Freedom from representational qualities in art.
（艺术上的）抽象
geometric abstraction has been a mainstay in her work
她作品的主体是几何抽象。
Example sentencesExamples
- While Odita's works have roots in patterned geometric abstraction, their choppy contours suggest both turbulence and organic growth.
- The postwar years reignited discussions about the relevance of abstraction versus representation, an issue that had preoccupied many artists before the war.
- Indeed, the animation style moves from abstraction to representation to abstraction again, as if to mirror the processes by which our world was formed.
- In the early years of the 20th century the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian was one of the first to take the step from representation to pure abstraction.
- Such painters as Yamaguchi, Saito and Onosato embraced the ideas of post-war abstraction.
- Murray is adept at achieving an osmotic relationship of sorts between geometric and painterly abstraction.
- The time has come to think beyond the divides of Pop and Minimalism, of Dada and abstraction, and of avant-garde and modernism.
- Recent memorials also reflect art's shift from representation to abstraction to a kind of alchemic transformation of image and material into a work of meaning.
- He turned his back on the London art-world and renounced the idea of abstraction, believing that a figurative style would be the only way to convey clearly what he had seen.
- That show laid out the paradigmatic, innovative modernist journey from representation to abstraction.
- By the 1970s Booth moved from geometric abstraction into drawing and painting his best known images.
- For Matisse, the ultimate task was to separate the boundaries between art and life and to push beyond - try with pure abstraction to attain some idea of the eternal, the sublime.
- Geometric abstraction, thirties activism, and Surrealism had their day in American art, but not at the Intimate Gallery or An American Place.
- It is a work of perfect weighting that shows that Hodgkin can still patrol the slippery frontiers between abstraction and representation.
- He says this is the reason why he chose abstraction and declares that he admires the works of Malevich, Kandisky and Klee.
- These contemporary landscape artists occupy a shifting terrain, bridging abstraction and representation.
- From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later.
- One beneficial effect of this curatorial decision was to emphasize that Palermo never gave up representation in favor of abstraction.
- Many of the quilts on view could almost be, if you squint, works of geometric abstraction by modern painters.
- Although that series was attractive, the paintings seemed to be testament to the artist's uncertainty of how to resolve the idea of combing abstraction with illusionistic space.
1. 2.1count noun An abstract work of art.
  抽象派艺术作品
  critics sought the meaning of O'Keeffe's abstractions
  a series of black-and-white abstractions
  Example sentencesExamples
  In another image, he paints himself as a Mondrian abstraction, the hints of his profile enough to jar the harmonious verticals and horizontals out of alignment.
  In some cases this involves paintings of studio setups that resemble formalist abstractions.
  This relentless rectilinearity is not presented as an underlying metaphysical reality, as in a Mondrian abstraction.
  Aware of the abstractions of Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Guston moved alongside them, exploring colour, space and painterly touch alone.
  Her recent acrylic abstractions are boldly graphic with radiant colors in dynamic geometric compositions.
  They are doing abstractions and photography and landscapes.
  Gone were the bronze statues and late-modern abstractions of earlier years.
  Instead she makes expansive, wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes.
  Malevich was represented by iconic Suprematist abstractions and by less familiar works that preceded and followed his brief zenith.
  The great landscape abstractions from the late '50s and early '60s were the showstoppers in the last of the three large rooms.
  Gimblett's ostensibly modernist abstractions are constructed, to an extent, like postmodernist pastiches.
  A section of chipboard becomes a painterly abstraction, with a faux bark edge as a frame.
  Her delicate abstractions combine digitally generated images with painting or aquatint.
  In these large, cartoonlike abstractions, there is an entire primer on the gambles and rewards of painting.
  Quiet Fire in Blue Sky, a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world.
  The horizontal bands of sky and sea take on the rich tonal consistencies of a Rothko abstraction.
  At first, it appeared to be an atmospheric abstraction made of green and silvery blue brushstrokes.
  Viewed close up, they become satisfying linear abstractions in their own right, in shades of black, white and gray.
  Several atmospheric abstractions in jewellike reds and blues hint at figuration.
  Like the Russian icons to which they are often compared, the Malevich abstractions gain spiritual power because they are also so physical.
3A state of preoccupation.
出神，心不在焉
she sensed his momentary abstraction
她感到他走了一下神。
Example sentencesExamples
- She seems quiet and reserved, carefully fingering the showy flowers with a wistful air of abstraction, lost in her own thoughts.
- The solicitor listened with an air of glassy-eyed abstraction.
- The Prince Bishop of Redmond toddled to his seat before the Joint Economic Committee with an air of abstraction and settled himself gently, only to discover that his two Evangelists had no place at the table.
Synonyms
absent-mindedness, distraction, preoccupation, daydreaming, dreaminess, inattentiveness, inattention, wool-gathering, absence, heedlessness, obliviousness
thoughtfulness, pensiveness, musing, brooding, absorption, engrossment, raptness
4The process of considering something independently of its associations or attributes.
孤立的考虑
the question cannot be considered in abstraction from the historical context in which it was raised
Example sentencesExamples
- When, for instance, we claim that water can freeze, we consider water simply as such, in abstraction from the conditions in which any given amount of water finds itself.
- Then, by a process of abstraction, we are supposed to arrive at the basic ‘non-objective’ ‘layer’ of this experience.
- As a result, the world of nature is studied in abstraction from the reality of God.
- I think what plausibility the contrary argument might seem to possess results from treating the act of lighting the cigarette in abstraction from the circumstances as a separate act.
- In abstraction from all such contexts, epistemic questions simply get no purchase.
- Duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences or vice-versa.
- It was by no means the last type of association to detach itself from the state by such a process of abstraction.
- Some interpreters have Aristotle distinguish the sciences on the basis of their degree of abstraction from matter.
- ‘Blackness’ once again results from the abstraction of a process or movement into an Idea, and once again becomes an ideology.
5The process of removing something, especially water from a river or other source.
去除，抽取（某物，尤指从河流或其他水源中抽水）
the abstraction of water from springs and wells
count noun abstractions from the Lowther in Cumbria
Example sentencesExamples
- Bad farming practices, soil erosion, water abstraction and the building of dam walls which prevent its upstream spawning migration are just some of the threats it faces.
- In this case, this involved costing restrictions on water abstraction and hydroelectric power station operation in order to maintain minimum in-stream flows.
- On the Thames these days, with increased water abstraction, the river tends to go quickly from a flood to a no-flow situation.
- This project includes the provision of a new source for the abstraction of water from the River Mahon, at the tidal divide near Ballylaneen.
- Strengths of our review were that each chart was reviewed independently at least twice for data abstraction, which limits the chance that data present were missed.
- In its submission, the IWAI said the EIS statement showed the abstraction would impact on water levels and considerably affect navigation in average summers.
- The new survey data will help United Utilities to monitor water abstraction more accurately than ever before.
- The aim is to increase the awareness of the existing legislative and regulatory framework in relation to water abstraction, production limitations and effluent discharges.
- Drainage and water abstraction already damage wetlands - peat deposits with all that they can tell us about past environments.
- River keeper John Hounslow said abstraction of millions of litres of water a day from the river at Axford by Thames Water combined with record dry spells had already reduced the river to worrying levels.
- No doubt reduced flows, due to water abstraction, increased clarity and apparent reduction in numbers of smaller species have all played a part in this increase in bream sizes.
- That was a case which involved the Water Resources Act 1963, which prohibited abstraction of water from a river without a licence from the Water Authority.
- Water abstraction, agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollution from sewage treatment plants have all been blamed.
- Mr Lidington said many water users were already struggling to pay their bills and warned that the Bill's proposals on abstraction could push them even higher.
- Flow rates have been reduced due to greater water abstraction.
- At last week's meeting, the councillors raised their own issues or concerns about the water abstraction, which is proposed for the northern, upstream side of Athy.
- Water supply in drainage basins is provided either by direct abstraction from rivers or by impoundment, which requires the construction of reservoirs.
- I have watched the river Wharfe and I am concerned about the number of houses going up in the area and the increased abstraction of water.
Synonyms
extraction, removal, separation, detachment

Origin

Late Middle English: from Latin abstractio(n-), from the verb abstrahere 'draw away' (see abstract).

Rhymes

action, attraction, benefaction, compaction, contraction, counteraction, diffraction, enaction, exaction, extraction, faction, fraction, interaction, liquefaction, malefaction, petrifaction, proaction, protraction, putrefaction, redaction, retroaction, satisfaction, stupefaction, subtraction, traction, transaction, tumefaction, vitrifaction

Definition of abstraction in US English:

abstraction

nounæbˈstrækʃ(ə)nabˈstrakSH(ə)n

1The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.
抽象
topics will vary in degrees of abstraction
各个题目的抽象程度不同。
Example sentencesExamples
- That surprising, sinking, excited feeling may be the essence of thought as felt experience, rather than as bare abstraction.
- Indeed, one might argue that the languages of music and of dance share a degree of abstraction somewhat compromised by the incursion of word and plot.
- Certainly the idea of number became more and more abstract and this abstraction then makes possible the consideration of zero and negative numbers which do not arise as properties of collections of objects.
- For a start, the level of abstraction in the argument masks some assumptions that I don't think hold - here's why.
- ‘Through abstraction I aspire towards the infinite rather than the specific,’ she observes.
- This may turn into a hypothetical ‘poetics’ of the religious visual image but at least it would be rooted in reality rather than in a realm of abstraction.
- In all these cases the process has been one of simplification; of generalisation; and, to some degree, of abstraction.
- Rather than address these questions from the realm of critical abstraction, however, Brown, like Bishop, addresses them from one of particulars.
- That said, my ambition was and still is to bring nuclear weapons out of the realm of abstraction and present them as a concrete subject rather than a theoretical policy issue.
- He can flit from populist argument to high brow abstraction and then back into quango-speak and then consultancy jargon with amazing felicity.
- It is the perspective of abstract ideality that, just because of its abstraction, is morally justified.
- That exercise provides no support at all for the idea that Heather is incapable of handling abstraction.
- But it is still very uncomfortable when the discourse moves beyond rather bare abstraction.
- To do this entails a degree of abstraction in the course of which patternings emerge, patternings of repetition and difference.
- That would require either a lot of power, or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level.
- At this point, neorealism returns full circle to neoclassical abstraction and its generalizing quality.
- Similarities across actually encountered expressions allow the extraction of schemas of varying degrees of abstraction.
- At that level of abstraction, the idea, though expressed in the design, would not have represented sufficient of the author's skill and labour as to attract copyright protection.
- Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood.
- The question is one which is much affected by the degree of abstraction with which it is posed.
1. 1.1 Something which exists only as an idea.
  抽象概念
  the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction
  不能再把这问题作为学术上的抽象概念来对待。
  Example sentencesExamples
  This historical perspective is by no means simply a theoretical abstraction.
  The modern way of waging war renders the abstractions of just-war theory obsolete.
  Do you think she viewed the men in her life as almost Platonic abstractions, as if she didn't really see the person there a lot of times?
  He had instructed her in the great abstractions of German philosophy, as expanded and amended by himself.
  As long as the military remains an all-volunteer force, they say, war and death could remain distant abstractions for most Americans.
  When I'm writing I often start out with abstractions and academic jargon, and purge it.
  He comes to be disgusted by all abstractions and ideas.
  It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as ‘them’.
  At one time, God was more than a hypothetical abstraction, and faith in his providence and design buttressed every major discipline of study.
  At first the idea was vague and formless, a brilliant abstraction about the surface area of a sphere, which is three times larger than the surface area of a flat chip.
  Software is not just an abstraction that exists in isolation.
  America cannot intervene, because the nation exists only as an abstraction.
  Money is a numeric abstraction that facilitates the trade of ideas and goods.
  Hope is not just a thing, a fantasy, a concept or an abstraction.
  This study shows that throughout his life, Guru Nanak did not indulge in metaphysical abstractions or recondite analysis of various religious thoughts.
  Not for Duncan the abstractions and obscurities of academic Marxism.
  It is no easier in central Nairobi than in Britain to resolve the enormous mental disconnection between the abstractions of politics and the specifics of poverty.
  A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society.
  He was a man whose mind was closed to abstractions and new ideas.
  He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control.
  Synonyms
  concept, idea, notion, thought, generality, generalization, theory, theorem, formula, hypothesis, speculation, conjecture, supposition, presumption
2Freedom from representational qualities in art.
（艺术上的）抽象
geometric abstraction has been a mainstay in her work
她作品的主体是几何抽象。
Example sentencesExamples
- Many of the quilts on view could almost be, if you squint, works of geometric abstraction by modern painters.
- It is a work of perfect weighting that shows that Hodgkin can still patrol the slippery frontiers between abstraction and representation.
- These contemporary landscape artists occupy a shifting terrain, bridging abstraction and representation.
- By the 1970s Booth moved from geometric abstraction into drawing and painting his best known images.
- From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later.
- One beneficial effect of this curatorial decision was to emphasize that Palermo never gave up representation in favor of abstraction.
- Geometric abstraction, thirties activism, and Surrealism had their day in American art, but not at the Intimate Gallery or An American Place.
- Murray is adept at achieving an osmotic relationship of sorts between geometric and painterly abstraction.
- Recent memorials also reflect art's shift from representation to abstraction to a kind of alchemic transformation of image and material into a work of meaning.
- For Matisse, the ultimate task was to separate the boundaries between art and life and to push beyond - try with pure abstraction to attain some idea of the eternal, the sublime.
- Indeed, the animation style moves from abstraction to representation to abstraction again, as if to mirror the processes by which our world was formed.
- The postwar years reignited discussions about the relevance of abstraction versus representation, an issue that had preoccupied many artists before the war.
- That show laid out the paradigmatic, innovative modernist journey from representation to abstraction.
- In the early years of the 20th century the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian was one of the first to take the step from representation to pure abstraction.
- Such painters as Yamaguchi, Saito and Onosato embraced the ideas of post-war abstraction.
- He says this is the reason why he chose abstraction and declares that he admires the works of Malevich, Kandisky and Klee.
- Although that series was attractive, the paintings seemed to be testament to the artist's uncertainty of how to resolve the idea of combing abstraction with illusionistic space.
- He turned his back on the London art-world and renounced the idea of abstraction, believing that a figurative style would be the only way to convey clearly what he had seen.
- While Odita's works have roots in patterned geometric abstraction, their choppy contours suggest both turbulence and organic growth.
- The time has come to think beyond the divides of Pop and Minimalism, of Dada and abstraction, and of avant-garde and modernism.
1. 2.1 An abstract work of art.
  抽象派艺术作品
  Example sentencesExamples
  Instead she makes expansive, wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes.
  Gimblett's ostensibly modernist abstractions are constructed, to an extent, like postmodernist pastiches.
  In these large, cartoonlike abstractions, there is an entire primer on the gambles and rewards of painting.
  The horizontal bands of sky and sea take on the rich tonal consistencies of a Rothko abstraction.
  This relentless rectilinearity is not presented as an underlying metaphysical reality, as in a Mondrian abstraction.
  Gone were the bronze statues and late-modern abstractions of earlier years.
  Her recent acrylic abstractions are boldly graphic with radiant colors in dynamic geometric compositions.
  Several atmospheric abstractions in jewellike reds and blues hint at figuration.
  In some cases this involves paintings of studio setups that resemble formalist abstractions.
  Viewed close up, they become satisfying linear abstractions in their own right, in shades of black, white and gray.
  In another image, he paints himself as a Mondrian abstraction, the hints of his profile enough to jar the harmonious verticals and horizontals out of alignment.
  Quiet Fire in Blue Sky, a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world.
  Malevich was represented by iconic Suprematist abstractions and by less familiar works that preceded and followed his brief zenith.
  Aware of the abstractions of Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Guston moved alongside them, exploring colour, space and painterly touch alone.
  A section of chipboard becomes a painterly abstraction, with a faux bark edge as a frame.
  They are doing abstractions and photography and landscapes.
  The great landscape abstractions from the late '50s and early '60s were the showstoppers in the last of the three large rooms.
  Her delicate abstractions combine digitally generated images with painting or aquatint.
  At first, it appeared to be an atmospheric abstraction made of green and silvery blue brushstrokes.
  Like the Russian icons to which they are often compared, the Malevich abstractions gain spiritual power because they are also so physical.
3A state of preoccupation.
出神，心不在焉
she sensed his momentary abstraction
她感到他走了一下神。
Example sentencesExamples
- She seems quiet and reserved, carefully fingering the showy flowers with a wistful air of abstraction, lost in her own thoughts.
- The Prince Bishop of Redmond toddled to his seat before the Joint Economic Committee with an air of abstraction and settled himself gently, only to discover that his two Evangelists had no place at the table.
- The solicitor listened with an air of glassy-eyed abstraction.
Synonyms
absent-mindedness, distraction, preoccupation, daydreaming, dreaminess, inattentiveness, inattention, wool-gathering, absence, heedlessness, obliviousness
4The process of considering something independently of its associations, attributes, or concrete accompaniments.
孤立的考虑
duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences
Example sentencesExamples
- Duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences or vice-versa.
- In abstraction from all such contexts, epistemic questions simply get no purchase.
- ‘Blackness’ once again results from the abstraction of a process or movement into an Idea, and once again becomes an ideology.
- Then, by a process of abstraction, we are supposed to arrive at the basic ‘non-objective’ ‘layer’ of this experience.
- When, for instance, we claim that water can freeze, we consider water simply as such, in abstraction from the conditions in which any given amount of water finds itself.
- It was by no means the last type of association to detach itself from the state by such a process of abstraction.
- As a result, the world of nature is studied in abstraction from the reality of God.
- I think what plausibility the contrary argument might seem to possess results from treating the act of lighting the cigarette in abstraction from the circumstances as a separate act.
- Some interpreters have Aristotle distinguish the sciences on the basis of their degree of abstraction from matter.
5The process of removing something, especially water from a river or other source.
去除，抽取（某物，尤指从河流或其他水源中抽水）
the abstraction of water from springs and wells
Example sentencesExamples
- Drainage and water abstraction already damage wetlands - peat deposits with all that they can tell us about past environments.
- Strengths of our review were that each chart was reviewed independently at least twice for data abstraction, which limits the chance that data present were missed.
- This project includes the provision of a new source for the abstraction of water from the River Mahon, at the tidal divide near Ballylaneen.
- The aim is to increase the awareness of the existing legislative and regulatory framework in relation to water abstraction, production limitations and effluent discharges.
- At last week's meeting, the councillors raised their own issues or concerns about the water abstraction, which is proposed for the northern, upstream side of Athy.
- Water abstraction, agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollution from sewage treatment plants have all been blamed.
- In this case, this involved costing restrictions on water abstraction and hydroelectric power station operation in order to maintain minimum in-stream flows.
- On the Thames these days, with increased water abstraction, the river tends to go quickly from a flood to a no-flow situation.
- Mr Lidington said many water users were already struggling to pay their bills and warned that the Bill's proposals on abstraction could push them even higher.
- River keeper John Hounslow said abstraction of millions of litres of water a day from the river at Axford by Thames Water combined with record dry spells had already reduced the river to worrying levels.
- Bad farming practices, soil erosion, water abstraction and the building of dam walls which prevent its upstream spawning migration are just some of the threats it faces.
- Water supply in drainage basins is provided either by direct abstraction from rivers or by impoundment, which requires the construction of reservoirs.
- No doubt reduced flows, due to water abstraction, increased clarity and apparent reduction in numbers of smaller species have all played a part in this increase in bream sizes.
- In its submission, the IWAI said the EIS statement showed the abstraction would impact on water levels and considerably affect navigation in average summers.
- Flow rates have been reduced due to greater water abstraction.
- I have watched the river Wharfe and I am concerned about the number of houses going up in the area and the increased abstraction of water.
- That was a case which involved the Water Resources Act 1963, which prohibited abstraction of water from a river without a licence from the Water Authority.
- The new survey data will help United Utilities to monitor water abstraction more accurately than ever before.
Synonyms
extraction, removal, separation, detachment

Origin

Late Middle English: from Latin abstractio(n-), from the verb abstrahere ‘draw away’ (see abstract).

词汇	abstraction
释义	Definition of abstraction in English: abstraction noun əbˈstrakʃ(ə)næbˈstrækʃ(ə)n mass noun 1The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events. 抽象 topics will vary in degrees of abstraction 各个题目的抽象程度不同。 Example sentencesExamples It is the perspective of abstract ideality that, just because of its abstraction, is morally justified. The question is one which is much affected by the degree of abstraction with which it is posed. This may turn into a hypothetical ‘poetics’ of the religious visual image but at least it would be rooted in reality rather than in a realm of abstraction. Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood. He can flit from populist argument to high brow abstraction and then back into quango-speak and then consultancy jargon with amazing felicity. Certainly the idea of number became more and more abstract and this abstraction then makes possible the consideration of zero and negative numbers which do not arise as properties of collections of objects. To do this entails a degree of abstraction in the course of which patternings emerge, patternings of repetition and difference. In all these cases the process has been one of simplification; of generalisation; and, to some degree, of abstraction. That said, my ambition was and still is to bring nuclear weapons out of the realm of abstraction and present them as a concrete subject rather than a theoretical policy issue. For a start, the level of abstraction in the argument masks some assumptions that I don't think hold - here's why. Rather than address these questions from the realm of critical abstraction, however, Brown, like Bishop, addresses them from one of particulars. At that level of abstraction, the idea, though expressed in the design, would not have represented sufficient of the author's skill and labour as to attract copyright protection. At this point, neorealism returns full circle to neoclassical abstraction and its generalizing quality. Indeed, one might argue that the languages of music and of dance share a degree of abstraction somewhat compromised by the incursion of word and plot. That would require either a lot of power, or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level. Similarities across actually encountered expressions allow the extraction of schemas of varying degrees of abstraction. But it is still very uncomfortable when the discourse moves beyond rather bare abstraction. ‘Through abstraction I aspire towards the infinite rather than the specific,’ she observes. That surprising, sinking, excited feeling may be the essence of thought as felt experience, rather than as bare abstraction. That exercise provides no support at all for the idea that Heather is incapable of handling abstraction. 1.1count noun Something which exists only as an idea. 抽象概念 the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction 不能再把这问题作为学术上的抽象概念来对待。 Example sentencesExamples This historical perspective is by no means simply a theoretical abstraction. It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as ‘them’. Money is a numeric abstraction that facilitates the trade of ideas and goods. He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control. He was a man whose mind was closed to abstractions and new ideas. America cannot intervene, because the nation exists only as an abstraction. This study shows that throughout his life, Guru Nanak did not indulge in metaphysical abstractions or recondite analysis of various religious thoughts. As long as the military remains an all-volunteer force, they say, war and death could remain distant abstractions for most Americans. He had instructed her in the great abstractions of German philosophy, as expanded and amended by himself. Not for Duncan the abstractions and obscurities of academic Marxism. Hope is not just a thing, a fantasy, a concept or an abstraction. At first the idea was vague and formless, a brilliant abstraction about the surface area of a sphere, which is three times larger than the surface area of a flat chip. Do you think she viewed the men in her life as almost Platonic abstractions, as if she didn't really see the person there a lot of times? The modern way of waging war renders the abstractions of just-war theory obsolete. At one time, God was more than a hypothetical abstraction, and faith in his providence and design buttressed every major discipline of study. When I'm writing I often start out with abstractions and academic jargon, and purge it. He comes to be disgusted by all abstractions and ideas. Software is not just an abstraction that exists in isolation. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society. It is no easier in central Nairobi than in Britain to resolve the enormous mental disconnection between the abstractions of politics and the specifics of poverty. Synonyms concept, idea, notion, thought, generality, generalization, theory, theorem, formula, hypothesis, speculation, conjecture, supposition, presumption 2Freedom from representational qualities in art. （艺术上的）抽象 geometric abstraction has been a mainstay in her work 她作品的主体是几何抽象。 Example sentencesExamples While Odita's works have roots in patterned geometric abstraction, their choppy contours suggest both turbulence and organic growth. The postwar years reignited discussions about the relevance of abstraction versus representation, an issue that had preoccupied many artists before the war. Indeed, the animation style moves from abstraction to representation to abstraction again, as if to mirror the processes by which our world was formed. In the early years of the 20th century the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian was one of the first to take the step from representation to pure abstraction. Such painters as Yamaguchi, Saito and Onosato embraced the ideas of post-war abstraction. Murray is adept at achieving an osmotic relationship of sorts between geometric and painterly abstraction. The time has come to think beyond the divides of Pop and Minimalism, of Dada and abstraction, and of avant-garde and modernism. Recent memorials also reflect art's shift from representation to abstraction to a kind of alchemic transformation of image and material into a work of meaning. He turned his back on the London art-world and renounced the idea of abstraction, believing that a figurative style would be the only way to convey clearly what he had seen. That show laid out the paradigmatic, innovative modernist journey from representation to abstraction. By the 1970s Booth moved from geometric abstraction into drawing and painting his best known images. For Matisse, the ultimate task was to separate the boundaries between art and life and to push beyond - try with pure abstraction to attain some idea of the eternal, the sublime. Geometric abstraction, thirties activism, and Surrealism had their day in American art, but not at the Intimate Gallery or An American Place. It is a work of perfect weighting that shows that Hodgkin can still patrol the slippery frontiers between abstraction and representation. He says this is the reason why he chose abstraction and declares that he admires the works of Malevich, Kandisky and Klee. These contemporary landscape artists occupy a shifting terrain, bridging abstraction and representation. From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later. One beneficial effect of this curatorial decision was to emphasize that Palermo never gave up representation in favor of abstraction. Many of the quilts on view could almost be, if you squint, works of geometric abstraction by modern painters. Although that series was attractive, the paintings seemed to be testament to the artist's uncertainty of how to resolve the idea of combing abstraction with illusionistic space. 2.1count noun An abstract work of art. 抽象派艺术作品 critics sought the meaning of O'Keeffe's abstractions a series of black-and-white abstractions Example sentencesExamples In another image, he paints himself as a Mondrian abstraction, the hints of his profile enough to jar the harmonious verticals and horizontals out of alignment. In some cases this involves paintings of studio setups that resemble formalist abstractions. This relentless rectilinearity is not presented as an underlying metaphysical reality, as in a Mondrian abstraction. Aware of the abstractions of Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Guston moved alongside them, exploring colour, space and painterly touch alone. Her recent acrylic abstractions are boldly graphic with radiant colors in dynamic geometric compositions. They are doing abstractions and photography and landscapes. Gone were the bronze statues and late-modern abstractions of earlier years. Instead she makes expansive, wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes. Malevich was represented by iconic Suprematist abstractions and by less familiar works that preceded and followed his brief zenith. The great landscape abstractions from the late '50s and early '60s were the showstoppers in the last of the three large rooms. Gimblett's ostensibly modernist abstractions are constructed, to an extent, like postmodernist pastiches. A section of chipboard becomes a painterly abstraction, with a faux bark edge as a frame. Her delicate abstractions combine digitally generated images with painting or aquatint. In these large, cartoonlike abstractions, there is an entire primer on the gambles and rewards of painting. Quiet Fire in Blue Sky, a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world. The horizontal bands of sky and sea take on the rich tonal consistencies of a Rothko abstraction. At first, it appeared to be an atmospheric abstraction made of green and silvery blue brushstrokes. Viewed close up, they become satisfying linear abstractions in their own right, in shades of black, white and gray. Several atmospheric abstractions in jewellike reds and blues hint at figuration. Like the Russian icons to which they are often compared, the Malevich abstractions gain spiritual power because they are also so physical. 3A state of preoccupation. 出神，心不在焉 she sensed his momentary abstraction 她感到他走了一下神。 Example sentencesExamples She seems quiet and reserved, carefully fingering the showy flowers with a wistful air of abstraction, lost in her own thoughts. The solicitor listened with an air of glassy-eyed abstraction. The Prince Bishop of Redmond toddled to his seat before the Joint Economic Committee with an air of abstraction and settled himself gently, only to discover that his two Evangelists had no place at the table. Synonyms absent-mindedness, distraction, preoccupation, daydreaming, dreaminess, inattentiveness, inattention, wool-gathering, absence, heedlessness, obliviousness thoughtfulness, pensiveness, musing, brooding, absorption, engrossment, raptness 4The process of considering something independently of its associations or attributes. 孤立的考虑 the question cannot be considered in abstraction from the historical context in which it was raised Example sentencesExamples When, for instance, we claim that water can freeze, we consider water simply as such, in abstraction from the conditions in which any given amount of water finds itself. Then, by a process of abstraction, we are supposed to arrive at the basic ‘non-objective’ ‘layer’ of this experience. As a result, the world of nature is studied in abstraction from the reality of God. I think what plausibility the contrary argument might seem to possess results from treating the act of lighting the cigarette in abstraction from the circumstances as a separate act. In abstraction from all such contexts, epistemic questions simply get no purchase. Duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences or vice-versa. It was by no means the last type of association to detach itself from the state by such a process of abstraction. Some interpreters have Aristotle distinguish the sciences on the basis of their degree of abstraction from matter. ‘Blackness’ once again results from the abstraction of a process or movement into an Idea, and once again becomes an ideology. 5The process of removing something, especially water from a river or other source. 去除，抽取（某物，尤指从河流或其他水源中抽水） the abstraction of water from springs and wells count noun abstractions from the Lowther in Cumbria Example sentencesExamples Bad farming practices, soil erosion, water abstraction and the building of dam walls which prevent its upstream spawning migration are just some of the threats it faces. In this case, this involved costing restrictions on water abstraction and hydroelectric power station operation in order to maintain minimum in-stream flows. On the Thames these days, with increased water abstraction, the river tends to go quickly from a flood to a no-flow situation. This project includes the provision of a new source for the abstraction of water from the River Mahon, at the tidal divide near Ballylaneen. Strengths of our review were that each chart was reviewed independently at least twice for data abstraction, which limits the chance that data present were missed. In its submission, the IWAI said the EIS statement showed the abstraction would impact on water levels and considerably affect navigation in average summers. The new survey data will help United Utilities to monitor water abstraction more accurately than ever before. The aim is to increase the awareness of the existing legislative and regulatory framework in relation to water abstraction, production limitations and effluent discharges. Drainage and water abstraction already damage wetlands - peat deposits with all that they can tell us about past environments. River keeper John Hounslow said abstraction of millions of litres of water a day from the river at Axford by Thames Water combined with record dry spells had already reduced the river to worrying levels. No doubt reduced flows, due to water abstraction, increased clarity and apparent reduction in numbers of smaller species have all played a part in this increase in bream sizes. That was a case which involved the Water Resources Act 1963, which prohibited abstraction of water from a river without a licence from the Water Authority. Water abstraction, agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollution from sewage treatment plants have all been blamed. Mr Lidington said many water users were already struggling to pay their bills and warned that the Bill's proposals on abstraction could push them even higher. Flow rates have been reduced due to greater water abstraction. At last week's meeting, the councillors raised their own issues or concerns about the water abstraction, which is proposed for the northern, upstream side of Athy. Water supply in drainage basins is provided either by direct abstraction from rivers or by impoundment, which requires the construction of reservoirs. I have watched the river Wharfe and I am concerned about the number of houses going up in the area and the increased abstraction of water. Synonyms extraction, removal, separation, detachment Origin Late Middle English: from Latin abstractio(n-), from the verb abstrahere 'draw away' (see abstract). Rhymes action, attraction, benefaction, compaction, contraction, counteraction, diffraction, enaction, exaction, extraction, faction, fraction, interaction, liquefaction, malefaction, petrifaction, proaction, protraction, putrefaction, redaction, retroaction, satisfaction, stupefaction, subtraction, traction, transaction, tumefaction, vitrifaction Definition of abstraction in US English: abstraction nounæbˈstrækʃ(ə)nabˈstrakSH(ə)n 1The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events. 抽象 topics will vary in degrees of abstraction 各个题目的抽象程度不同。 Example sentencesExamples That surprising, sinking, excited feeling may be the essence of thought as felt experience, rather than as bare abstraction. Indeed, one might argue that the languages of music and of dance share a degree of abstraction somewhat compromised by the incursion of word and plot. Certainly the idea of number became more and more abstract and this abstraction then makes possible the consideration of zero and negative numbers which do not arise as properties of collections of objects. For a start, the level of abstraction in the argument masks some assumptions that I don't think hold - here's why. ‘Through abstraction I aspire towards the infinite rather than the specific,’ she observes. This may turn into a hypothetical ‘poetics’ of the religious visual image but at least it would be rooted in reality rather than in a realm of abstraction. In all these cases the process has been one of simplification; of generalisation; and, to some degree, of abstraction. Rather than address these questions from the realm of critical abstraction, however, Brown, like Bishop, addresses them from one of particulars. That said, my ambition was and still is to bring nuclear weapons out of the realm of abstraction and present them as a concrete subject rather than a theoretical policy issue. He can flit from populist argument to high brow abstraction and then back into quango-speak and then consultancy jargon with amazing felicity. It is the perspective of abstract ideality that, just because of its abstraction, is morally justified. That exercise provides no support at all for the idea that Heather is incapable of handling abstraction. But it is still very uncomfortable when the discourse moves beyond rather bare abstraction. To do this entails a degree of abstraction in the course of which patternings emerge, patternings of repetition and difference. That would require either a lot of power, or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level. At this point, neorealism returns full circle to neoclassical abstraction and its generalizing quality. Similarities across actually encountered expressions allow the extraction of schemas of varying degrees of abstraction. At that level of abstraction, the idea, though expressed in the design, would not have represented sufficient of the author's skill and labour as to attract copyright protection. Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood. The question is one which is much affected by the degree of abstraction with which it is posed. 1.1 Something which exists only as an idea. 抽象概念 the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction 不能再把这问题作为学术上的抽象概念来对待。 Example sentencesExamples This historical perspective is by no means simply a theoretical abstraction. The modern way of waging war renders the abstractions of just-war theory obsolete. Do you think she viewed the men in her life as almost Platonic abstractions, as if she didn't really see the person there a lot of times? He had instructed her in the great abstractions of German philosophy, as expanded and amended by himself. As long as the military remains an all-volunteer force, they say, war and death could remain distant abstractions for most Americans. When I'm writing I often start out with abstractions and academic jargon, and purge it. He comes to be disgusted by all abstractions and ideas. It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as ‘them’. At one time, God was more than a hypothetical abstraction, and faith in his providence and design buttressed every major discipline of study. At first the idea was vague and formless, a brilliant abstraction about the surface area of a sphere, which is three times larger than the surface area of a flat chip. Software is not just an abstraction that exists in isolation. America cannot intervene, because the nation exists only as an abstraction. Money is a numeric abstraction that facilitates the trade of ideas and goods. Hope is not just a thing, a fantasy, a concept or an abstraction. This study shows that throughout his life, Guru Nanak did not indulge in metaphysical abstractions or recondite analysis of various religious thoughts. Not for Duncan the abstractions and obscurities of academic Marxism. It is no easier in central Nairobi than in Britain to resolve the enormous mental disconnection between the abstractions of politics and the specifics of poverty. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society. He was a man whose mind was closed to abstractions and new ideas. He feels the need to retreat into impersonal abstractions, into structures or alleged structures over which the victim has no control. Synonyms concept, idea, notion, thought, generality, generalization, theory, theorem, formula, hypothesis, speculation, conjecture, supposition, presumption 2Freedom from representational qualities in art. （艺术上的）抽象 geometric abstraction has been a mainstay in her work 她作品的主体是几何抽象。 Example sentencesExamples Many of the quilts on view could almost be, if you squint, works of geometric abstraction by modern painters. It is a work of perfect weighting that shows that Hodgkin can still patrol the slippery frontiers between abstraction and representation. These contemporary landscape artists occupy a shifting terrain, bridging abstraction and representation. By the 1970s Booth moved from geometric abstraction into drawing and painting his best known images. From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later. One beneficial effect of this curatorial decision was to emphasize that Palermo never gave up representation in favor of abstraction. Geometric abstraction, thirties activism, and Surrealism had their day in American art, but not at the Intimate Gallery or An American Place. Murray is adept at achieving an osmotic relationship of sorts between geometric and painterly abstraction. Recent memorials also reflect art's shift from representation to abstraction to a kind of alchemic transformation of image and material into a work of meaning. For Matisse, the ultimate task was to separate the boundaries between art and life and to push beyond - try with pure abstraction to attain some idea of the eternal, the sublime. Indeed, the animation style moves from abstraction to representation to abstraction again, as if to mirror the processes by which our world was formed. The postwar years reignited discussions about the relevance of abstraction versus representation, an issue that had preoccupied many artists before the war. That show laid out the paradigmatic, innovative modernist journey from representation to abstraction. In the early years of the 20th century the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian was one of the first to take the step from representation to pure abstraction. Such painters as Yamaguchi, Saito and Onosato embraced the ideas of post-war abstraction. He says this is the reason why he chose abstraction and declares that he admires the works of Malevich, Kandisky and Klee. Although that series was attractive, the paintings seemed to be testament to the artist's uncertainty of how to resolve the idea of combing abstraction with illusionistic space. He turned his back on the London art-world and renounced the idea of abstraction, believing that a figurative style would be the only way to convey clearly what he had seen. While Odita's works have roots in patterned geometric abstraction, their choppy contours suggest both turbulence and organic growth. The time has come to think beyond the divides of Pop and Minimalism, of Dada and abstraction, and of avant-garde and modernism. 2.1 An abstract work of art. 抽象派艺术作品 Example sentencesExamples Instead she makes expansive, wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes. Gimblett's ostensibly modernist abstractions are constructed, to an extent, like postmodernist pastiches. In these large, cartoonlike abstractions, there is an entire primer on the gambles and rewards of painting. The horizontal bands of sky and sea take on the rich tonal consistencies of a Rothko abstraction. This relentless rectilinearity is not presented as an underlying metaphysical reality, as in a Mondrian abstraction. Gone were the bronze statues and late-modern abstractions of earlier years. Her recent acrylic abstractions are boldly graphic with radiant colors in dynamic geometric compositions. Several atmospheric abstractions in jewellike reds and blues hint at figuration. In some cases this involves paintings of studio setups that resemble formalist abstractions. Viewed close up, they become satisfying linear abstractions in their own right, in shades of black, white and gray. In another image, he paints himself as a Mondrian abstraction, the hints of his profile enough to jar the harmonious verticals and horizontals out of alignment. Quiet Fire in Blue Sky, a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world. Malevich was represented by iconic Suprematist abstractions and by less familiar works that preceded and followed his brief zenith. Aware of the abstractions of Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Guston moved alongside them, exploring colour, space and painterly touch alone. A section of chipboard becomes a painterly abstraction, with a faux bark edge as a frame. They are doing abstractions and photography and landscapes. The great landscape abstractions from the late '50s and early '60s were the showstoppers in the last of the three large rooms. Her delicate abstractions combine digitally generated images with painting or aquatint. At first, it appeared to be an atmospheric abstraction made of green and silvery blue brushstrokes. Like the Russian icons to which they are often compared, the Malevich abstractions gain spiritual power because they are also so physical. 3A state of preoccupation. 出神，心不在焉 she sensed his momentary abstraction 她感到他走了一下神。 Example sentencesExamples She seems quiet and reserved, carefully fingering the showy flowers with a wistful air of abstraction, lost in her own thoughts. The Prince Bishop of Redmond toddled to his seat before the Joint Economic Committee with an air of abstraction and settled himself gently, only to discover that his two Evangelists had no place at the table. The solicitor listened with an air of glassy-eyed abstraction. Synonyms absent-mindedness, distraction, preoccupation, daydreaming, dreaminess, inattentiveness, inattention, wool-gathering, absence, heedlessness, obliviousness 4The process of considering something independently of its associations, attributes, or concrete accompaniments. 孤立的考虑 duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences Example sentencesExamples Duty is no longer determined in abstraction from the consequences or vice-versa. In abstraction from all such contexts, epistemic questions simply get no purchase. ‘Blackness’ once again results from the abstraction of a process or movement into an Idea, and once again becomes an ideology. Then, by a process of abstraction, we are supposed to arrive at the basic ‘non-objective’ ‘layer’ of this experience. When, for instance, we claim that water can freeze, we consider water simply as such, in abstraction from the conditions in which any given amount of water finds itself. It was by no means the last type of association to detach itself from the state by such a process of abstraction. As a result, the world of nature is studied in abstraction from the reality of God. I think what plausibility the contrary argument might seem to possess results from treating the act of lighting the cigarette in abstraction from the circumstances as a separate act. Some interpreters have Aristotle distinguish the sciences on the basis of their degree of abstraction from matter. 5The process of removing something, especially water from a river or other source. 去除，抽取（某物，尤指从河流或其他水源中抽水） the abstraction of water from springs and wells Example sentencesExamples Drainage and water abstraction already damage wetlands - peat deposits with all that they can tell us about past environments. Strengths of our review were that each chart was reviewed independently at least twice for data abstraction, which limits the chance that data present were missed. This project includes the provision of a new source for the abstraction of water from the River Mahon, at the tidal divide near Ballylaneen. The aim is to increase the awareness of the existing legislative and regulatory framework in relation to water abstraction, production limitations and effluent discharges. At last week's meeting, the councillors raised their own issues or concerns about the water abstraction, which is proposed for the northern, upstream side of Athy. Water abstraction, agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollution from sewage treatment plants have all been blamed. In this case, this involved costing restrictions on water abstraction and hydroelectric power station operation in order to maintain minimum in-stream flows. On the Thames these days, with increased water abstraction, the river tends to go quickly from a flood to a no-flow situation. Mr Lidington said many water users were already struggling to pay their bills and warned that the Bill's proposals on abstraction could push them even higher. River keeper John Hounslow said abstraction of millions of litres of water a day from the river at Axford by Thames Water combined with record dry spells had already reduced the river to worrying levels. Bad farming practices, soil erosion, water abstraction and the building of dam walls which prevent its upstream spawning migration are just some of the threats it faces. Water supply in drainage basins is provided either by direct abstraction from rivers or by impoundment, which requires the construction of reservoirs. No doubt reduced flows, due to water abstraction, increased clarity and apparent reduction in numbers of smaller species have all played a part in this increase in bream sizes. In its submission, the IWAI said the EIS statement showed the abstraction would impact on water levels and considerably affect navigation in average summers. Flow rates have been reduced due to greater water abstraction. I have watched the river Wharfe and I am concerned about the number of houses going up in the area and the increased abstraction of water. That was a case which involved the Water Resources Act 1963, which prohibited abstraction of water from a river without a licence from the Water Authority. The new survey data will help United Utilities to monitor water abstraction more accurately than ever before. Synonyms extraction, removal, separation, detachment Origin Late Middle English: from Latin abstractio(n-), from the verb abstrahere ‘draw away’ (see abstract).
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