Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of abstraction.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • We are, then, shut up, apparently, to the conclusion that Milton intends to treat what we know as abstractions, the virtues and the vices of our moral constitution, as actual, independent beings in the invisible world.

    Milton's Angels 1884

  • The problem with such kind of abstractions is that they leak too easily, leaving the developer in a situation in which he must uses the abstraction only for simple things and break it every time something more complex is needed.

    Reflective Surface - HTML generation is bad 2005

  • The problem with such kind of abstractions is that they leak too easily, leaving the developer in a situation in which he must uses the abstraction only for simple things and break it every time something more complex is needed.

    Reflective Surface - Archives: 2005 June 2005

  • He doesn't deal in abstractions or what policymakers in the Pentagon and White House think.

    What's Sebastian Junger's 'War' good for? Quite a bit 2010

  • The immediate contents of direct experience cannot be reduced to the mere sensory datum of Hume, the latter in fact being rather egregious abstractions from the extraordinary wealth of actual experience.

    Think Progress » Clinton: Media, Politicians Shouldn’t Fuel ‘Hatriot’ Groups With Anti-Government Rhetoric That Inspired McVeigh 2010

  • It's hard to fluff the couplet unless you're dealing solely in abstractions, which should be a warning about the abstractions that too often pass here for reasoning.

    What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici James Purdon 2010

  • To date the greenhouse-effect debate has been largely carried out in abstractions — arguments about the distant past (what do those 100,000-year-old ice cores in Greenland really tell us about ancient temperatures, anyway?) coupled to computer-model conjecture regarding the 22nd century, with the occasional Hollywood disaster movie thrown in.

    Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins? 2007

  • To date the greenhouse-effect debate has been largely carried out in abstractions — arguments about the distant past (what do those 100,000-year-old ice cores in Greenland really tell us about ancient temperatures, anyway?) coupled to computer-model conjecture regarding the 22nd century, with the occasional Hollywood disaster movie thrown in.

    Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins? 2007

  • To date the greenhouse-effect debate has been largely carried out in abstractions — arguments about the distant past (what do those 100,000-year-old ice cores in Greenland really tell us about ancient temperatures, anyway?) coupled to computer-model conjecture regarding the 22nd century, with the occasional Hollywood disaster movie thrown in.

    Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins? 2007

  • To date the greenhouse-effect debate has been largely carried out in abstractions — arguments about the distant past (what do those 100,000-year-old ice cores in Greenland really tell us about ancient temperatures, anyway?) coupled to computer-model conjecture regarding the 22nd century, with the occasional Hollywood disaster movie thrown in.

    Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins? 2007

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