1. To withdraw; to separate; to take away.
He was incapable of forming any opinion or resolution abstracted from his own prejudices.
Sir W. Scott.
2. To draw off in respect to interest or attention; as, his was wholly abstracted by other objects.
The young stranger had been abstracted and silent.
Blackw. Mag.
3. To separate, as ideas, by the operation of the mind; to consider by itself; to contemplate separately, as
a quality or attribute. Whately.
4. To epitomize; to abridge. Franklin.
5. To take secretly or dishonestly; to purloin; as, to abstract goods from a parcel, or money from a till.
Von Rosen had quietly abstracted the bearing-reins from the harness.
W. Black.
6. (Chem.) To separate, as the more volatile or soluble parts of a substance, by distillation or other
chemical processes. In this sense extract is now more generally used.
Abstract
(Ab*stract"), v. t. To perform the process of abstraction. [R.]
I own myself able to abstract in one sense.
Berkeley.
Abstract
(Ab"stract`) n. [See Abstract, a.]
1. That which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential qualities of a larger thing or of several
things. Specifically: A summary or an epitome, as of a treatise or book, or of a statement; a brief.
An abstract of every treatise he had read.
Watts.
Man, the abstract
Of all perfection, which the workmanship
Of Heaven hath modeled.
Ford.
2. A state of separation from other things; as, to consider a subject in the abstract, or apart from other
associated things.
3. An abstract term.
The concretes "father" and "son" have, or might have, the abstracts "paternity" and "filiety."
J. S. Mill.
4. (Med.) A powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance mixed with sugar of milk in such proportion
that one part of the abstract represents two parts of the original substance.
Abstract of title (Law), an epitome of the evidences of ownership.
Syn. — Abridgment; compendium; epitome; synopsis. See Abridgment.
Abstracted
(Ab*stract"ed) a.
1. Separated or disconnected; withdrawn; removed; apart.
The evil abstracted stood from his own evil.
Milton.
2. Separated from matter; abstract; ideal. [Obs.]
3. Abstract; abstruse; difficult. [Obs.] Johnson.
4. Inattentive to surrounding objects; absent in mind. "An abstracted scholar." Johnson.
